


Indigo Pull

by Elementalist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Southern Gothic, Amputee Shiro (Voltron), Anxiety, Developing Relationship, Empath, Empathy, Especially on Lance's side of things, Family Secrets, Gen, Getting Together, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Human/Vampire Relationship, Intense Emotions, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Half-Siblings, Lance (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Magic Realism, Male Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, Near Death Experiences, Panic Attacks, Protective Siblings, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Team as Family, Trans Male Pidge | Katie Holt, Transphobia, Vampire Keith (Voltron), Violence, Witch Lance (Voltron), empath Lance, there's instances of:, this happens way later and I'll make sure to add more warnings when it comes, which is noted at the beginning of the chapter it occurs in!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2020-12-28 11:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 236,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21136244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elementalist/pseuds/Elementalist
Summary: Rachel snapped her hand out towards him, shushing him when he didn’t even know he was about to speak. “I think you had your gift a lot longer than you think. You just did that thing you do and tried to ignore it. You used to cry whenever we did. Didn’t matter why. When Luis fell off his bike, do you remember that?”The images of bright blood rolling down tanned arms popped into his head, the echo of a scream. It’d been summer then, humidity thick, the dirt paths around the farm baking hot. July at its zenith.“Yeah. He needed stitches.”“Exactly. Luis was hurt, but there you were: an ugly, sobbing mess. That was the first time mom had a suspicion.”What Lance remembered didn’t stick out as supernatural, just his own, full heart trying to shoulder everything for everyone else.---This is a story involving an old plantation manor that may or may not be haunted; a story about how bad things happen to good people, often in terrible, ugly ways. This, at its core, is a story about how everyone in Indigo Pull has their own secrets, and how these secrets grow until they cannot be kept, like overgrown fields lost to weeds or a young heart to the temptation of love.-hiatus-





	1. Chapter 1

They say Indigo Pull was a place where magic lay thick in the soil, threaded itself tightly through the overhanging Spanish moss, and cobbled the very streets--if, that is, the stories were to be believed. It was all talk, like most, an easy topic to utter to a traveler stopping in for a tank of gas or to the grandkids visiting from up north. Something to make Indigo Pull a little  _ more _ , a little special, a verbal attempt to distract the eye from all the dust and the mosquitoes and the mire-thick puddles of stand-still water from last week's rainfall. A game of dress-up.

But even so, the community of homes scattered across its acreage, most farms or large family estates passed down from generation to generation, supplied enough charm to keep the town’s small motel busy with guests and the diner from closing its doors for good.

It's here that Lance McClain called home, and, if asked, he’d defend it to the grave. He loved it here. Loved the muggy summers thick with humidity and the small breaks of winter at the end of the year. He loved his two-story house just off of Laurel Street, all six rooms of it, and all the people that lived stuffed inside. It was one of those homes attached to a swath of decent land, tilled up by Lance’s hardworking Papa, planted with a variety of jewel corn and squash and anything else the soil took. There were cows to care after, chickens to fatten, and a single goat that, spoiled by his _ abuela _, gave enough milk by the week to keep their small side business of homemade soaps and lotions going. 

And like everything else tucked in Indigo Pull, people liked to talk about them too. Lance heard it all his life, names against the color of his skin, jabs against his father and mother, as if owning a farm somehow made Diego and Maria McClain _ less _ than anyone else. Behind cupped hands and wicked sneers, the word _ bruja _trailed after his sisters and his mother like tiny, sharp-edged shadows. There were other words, other slurs, pitched Lance's way in particular, things he trained himself to ignore and make light of.

Words, after all, were only words.

Lance scuffed his feet as he came to a stop, absentmindedly adjusting the weight of his backpack over his shoulder. Hunk, at one side, shuffled, a little nervous, chewing on his lower lip. Veronica, the eldest and least impressed, here only to usher the two of them to their first day of school, stood on Lance’s other side, her head tilted back. Sunlight glinted off her glasses.

In front of them stood a wrought-iron gate fashioned to look like twisted rose vines. A single lion-head bloomed from the center of the gate where the two halves met, its’ metal jaws open to show off an impressive array of still-sharp black teeth. Lance reached forward to test one on impulse and snapped his hand back quick.

A bead of blood welled at his fingertip, red as an August dusk.

“_ Jesus _,” he huffed, running his tongue against it, brows twisted. His blue eyes caught the details beyond the gate--the overrun shrubbery, the piebald curtains secured over dusty windows, a door askew on its hinges, wood swollen from the summer heat and rains. A small stone path made of various odds and shapes of river stone. Broken statues of angels weeping over lost wings and fingers. Milky white columns of real marble choked by wild ivy.

Lance dropped his hand and took a step back.

The people of Indigo Pull affectionately called the plantation Lion Castle. But Lion Castle wasn’t a castle at all.

What grew out of the run-wild indigo shrubs and weed tangles was an old manor, barely stitched together after several decades of neglect. The roof had more shingles missing than attached. White paint curled like chocolate shavings from the baseboard to nearly the roof. Kudzu had taken over the upper porch entirely, and it spilled from between the thin, iron railing like a lushly alive green waterfall, the very tips of triangular leaves skimming over the concrete porch directly below it, pooling emerald shadows over what peeked behind. Dark patches of black mold decorated one side of the house, while the sunshine caught on the shards of the broken front windows, turning shattered glass into razor-edged teeth.

Everyone knew nothing good came from this place. Not back when it was in its full thrive, and not now, when the only thing it exported were stories of witches or devils or ghosts that lived within its decaying halls.

For years, Lance and his siblings walked by the old plantation on their way to school. As they grew older, the stories would change, darken, bloody, until Lance wasn't sure if Lion Castle was actually full of spirits or spite. Looking at it, seeing how hard Indigo Pull summers tore it down, Lance didn’t see how anyone--or any_ thing _\--would want to call it home.

It also lost points for biting him.

Veronica glanced over at him, her thin brows arched up. “Why’d you do that? You knew it was sharp,” she commented, humor dry.

Lance lifted a shoulder, shook his hand once, then hid it away in his jacket pocket. He already regretted pulling it on. August summer mornings were deceivingly cool until the moment you left the house. Then all the heat came out from hiding and seemed to cozy up against you, or in Lance’s case, weigh down the pockets of his coat. He was sweating and had complained all the way up the hill, but refused to do anything about it. Hunk told him twice just to take it off, problem solved, easy-peasy, and Lance dutifully, stubbornly ignored him.

“Yeah, well, you never know.” Lance frowned. “Things change.”

“C'mon, bud. You know it's metal.” This was Hunk, and softly-spoken. He was distracted, barely paying attention, his eyes dancing and shaping up the looming gate and what it kept them from getting to. He clutched his phone in his hand, presumably texting Pidge they were on their way to fetch him.

“Yeah, yeah, okay but look.” Lance threw his hands out for emphasis, fingers pointing at the gate and, maybe, at Lion Castle itself. “You heard, right? Some guys at school were saying someone is moving in. Like, soon. Or has already.”

“I heard it too,” Hunk added, finally looking over at Lance. His expression twisted up, and his hands wrung the strap of his bag. “But, I’ve heard a lot of other things. So I can’t--I can’t see why anyone would want to live in some haunted house.”

Veronica rolled her eyes. “You two aren’t serious.”

Lance shot back, “What!” His arms flew up in the air. “Like you don't know. You used to tell the stories, V!”

“And you still think they're real? Ghosts aren’t _ real _, Lance. Most stories from around here aren’t.” She turned her head, looking off towards the house, gaze sweeping up to one of the second-story windows. Her last words rang out, a little sour, a little bitter, “It’s all superstition.”

Lance groaned. “Okay, so what? There’s someone _ moving in _. That’s the point. But the gate’s still locked.” He went back up to the gate and gave it a hard rattle. It didn’t budge. “And I don’t see a moving truck anywhere.”

“Things take time,” was all Veronica would say.

There wasn’t much left to investigate or see that hadn’t already been seen for years, so Veronica ushered them away, shooing them down the drive before they missed class. But as Lance scuffed his feet in the dirt and Hunk hurriedly followed, Veronica glanced back again, up at that same window.

It was just a twitch, a shiver, a sigh, but she was sure the curtains had moved.

_ ♰♰♰ _

Pidge Holt waited for them at the end of the road, face buried in his phone, thumbs frantically punching in line after line of text. Or maybe code. Or, knowing him, a little of both. There was no time for greetings--the delay at Lion Castle made them later than normal, something Pidge harped them for as the four of them continued on to school.

“I was beginning to wonder if you three got lost, though I don’t see how that would be probable, considering I’m on the way.” The phone screen flashed, then disappeared into a pocket. “But, really, where _ were _ you guys?”

Veronica wore a teasing smile. “Lance wanted to try to break into Lion Castle on the way here.”

“Oh, I did not!” To Pidge, he said, proving Veronica's point, “It’s still as locked-down as ever, anyway, so what’s the point? You heard, didn’t you?”

Pidge blinked, humming softly. “Wait. You mean about someone moving in? Well, yeah. Dad mentioned it. I don’t see why you care.”

“Same, man, but it’s all he’s been talking about for days.” Hunk ignored the heated look Lance shot him. “Hey, calm down, I’m just saying you normally never gave a thought to it before, and now it’s, like, suddenly the only thing on your radar.”

“Seriously, is _ no one else _ even the slightest bit curious? That house has been boarded up as long as I’ve been alive! And now-- _ suddenly _ \--blam-o! Someone buys it and all the land around it up and is, what, going to rebuild it or something? Make it into a museum? _ Live there _? I bet they don't even know all that stuff about ghosts and vampires or whatever. I just wanna know who’s stupid enough to do it.”

Pidge snorted. “Stupid, huh? Dad said it was inherited. By some northern girl around our age. I think he meet them,” he added as an afterthought, tapping a finger against his lips. “Or saw them at the bank making arrangements. Something like that.”

Lance came to a sudden halt. “Wait. What? _ Inherited _?”

Lion Castle hadn’t been active since late after the Civil war. After the South lost, and the market for that type of trade died out, the original owners of the plantation left in hopes of clearing their names while keeping their hands still buried firmly in their indigo fortune. Rumor had it the family traveled up north and made a decent life investing in upstart schemes and trading stock, harvesting even more bushels of wealth along the way. The abandoned house and its’ bad memories were a smear on the town afterward, a relic barely standing after the long decades. The twisted black iron gate remained locked for a reason.

Ghosts were only so bad when compared to the true horrors said to have happened on Lion Castle’s soil. Sometimes time couldn’t rinse the bad taste out of your mouth or the poison from the soil. 

That was the real question hanging in the air that muggy, summer morning, left unspoken except, maybe, by the dawn-confused cicadas: 

Who would want to risk calling that place _ home _?

_ ♰♰♰ _

School passed in a flurry of hallway conversations and passed notes, a quick lunch, and whispered discussions in Spanish, the latter which Hunk and Pidge responded to Lance’s questions with ¿_ Que? _just to annoy him. 

No matter how he tried to pique their interests, his friends didn’t seem to care as much as he did about Indigo Pull’s newest residents, if they came at all. Lance tried not to let it bother him, but as the day wound down to evening and the bright oranges of sunset fell behind heavy clouds, he was still distracted with thinking about the mysterious girl and her family.

Just who were they? And, if what Pidge said was true, that she _ was _ around their age, would she go to school with them? Where from up north did she come from? Maine? New York? Lance had traveled once up to Maryland on a family trip, on one of the last weeks his Pappy was still alive, to fish for crabs in the choppy, gray Atlantic. The wind was cold even in May, and they spent hours on a damp, creaking dock for the pleasure of catching only a single, pinching crab more meanness than meat. And since, Lance always thought about people from the north, and maybe the north in general, as bitter, cold, and temperamental things. 

“Paging Captain McClain, you’re needed back on Earth.”

Lance blinked.

He looked over to Hunk walking beside him. His friend grinned and nudged him with a playful elbow.  
“Back yet, buddy? Pidge asked you about five times if you were coming over for dinner or not. And you know how he gets when people don’t listen,” he teased.

“I mean, if you don’t want free food, that’s up to you, but you promised me last week you’d watch the new _ Alien _remake, and I want to cash in.” 

How Pidge managed to hold on to the vein of conversation _ and _ walk without tripping over his shoes while all his attention was on his phone was something Lance privately envied. Kid had some talents, that’s for sure.

Lance tilted his chin, frowning, and crossed his arms. “I don’t have anything else to do, might as well.” He paused, letting his arms fall to his sides. “You. . .didn’t really ask five times, did you?”

“Closer to four, though I was about to kick you in the back of the knees and try again,” Pidge remarked, looking up from the glow of his phone screen.

“Wow, _ rude _!”

“Ignoring us is, too, you know. All’s fair in war, right? And I would know, considering my dad and brother fought in one.” 

Hunk gave a good-hearted chuckle and caught Lance’s arm before he had the chance to retaliate. “I can’t join you guys tonight. I’ve got garage duty,” he said without a touch of disappointment. “We got in a sweet Firebird a few days ago that needs a brand-new transmission. My dad’s gonna teach me how to install it.”

Lance scoffed and shook his long arm out of Hunk’s hold. “That doesn’t sound fun at all.”

“You know horror movies upset my stomach, Lance.”

“_Is_ _Alien_ a horror movie,” Lance asked back. He actually looked around as Pidge quipped, “The remake promises to be a _nightmare_,” and realized they were nearly to Pidge’s estate house already. Caught up in his head, he hadn’t noticed how far they’d gotten. 

Indigo Pull had one, large cemetery, nestled on three rolling acres of hills sandwiched between the plantation and, further down the road, the start of the Holt’s property line. It boasted gravestones as old as from the early 1800’s, and yew trees older than that. Two family plots were fenced off from the rest--one being the Holt’s, who had lived in Indigo Pull since Pidge’s great-great-great grandmother’s generation. Twice a month, the Holt’s walked across the hill to dust the graves off or carefully lay out new flowers. Pidge even convinced them to bury the family goldfish there, tucked right beside his grandfather, in a small grave marked with a child’s carefully constructed popsicle-stick cross. 

To this day, Pidge replaced the cross with a new one anytime it broke or vanished.

Usually, the graveyard was empty. But today, in the softening gloom, with the threat of a storm hanging overhead, someone stood in front of a grave, partially hidden under one of the many trees, stance tense, hands thrust in jean pockets.

Lance slowed down. Hunk and Pidge, caught up in their own conversation of utterly terrible movie remakes and sequels, walked on ahead.

Whoever it was had their back to him. Lance could just make out slender shoulders, a thin frame, and flips of dark hair against the bright red of a jacket. 

_ Oh _. 

He knew that jacket.

He stopped walking entirely.

He knew that _ hair _.

Hissing not-so-subtly, he asked his friends, “Hey, guys--is that _ Keith _?”

Keith Kogane dropped out of school the year before, and not many people had seen him around since. He showed up from time to time, asking for work at Hunk’s family garage, or walking the streets late at night, looking like trouble but never causing much. Lance’s mom always clucked her tongue with worry when he was brought up, saying it was a shame, shame that he was letting all of his potential go to waste. But the one time Keith happened by the farm on an early morning walk, she called him over and told him to help her water the animals and collect the eggs. She sent him off with a basket full of a good, home-cooked breakfast and two dozen eggs to eat or sell for all his hard work, and a stern talk-to about his life choices. Lance had slept through the entire thing, or he would have heard her tell him that he needed to stop grieving and start living again.

He also would have seen her hug him and tell him he was welcome back anytime, and not just for work. She invited him to supper any night he was free, if he wanted. They kept up the ritual of setting out an extra plate, just in case. Lance usually volunteered to put it back up when Keith never showed.

They used to be friends once, or sort of. Not close like he was with Hunk or Pidge, but they had talked from time-to-time, and Lance had joined the school’s track team with him back in Sophmore year. They were rivals in a way, with Lance always trying to one-up Keith’s times, and Keith always doing the same when Lance actually accomplished it. 

But then Texas Kogane died, and Keith might as well had died with him.

They buried him in March; Keith dropped out of school the first week of April, a little over a month shy of finishing his Senior year. 

Lance felt guilt bubble in his stomach as he watched Keith stand there. He wanted to walk up and check on him, see how he was, _ something _, but he hesitated. If Keith wanted company, he could’ve come over to his house anytime in the last year. The invitation had no expiration. Lance doubted it would ever be taken.

When his Pappy died, Lance had taken it hard. So he knew, in a way, what Keith was feeling. It was different, yes--his Pappy had been sick for weeks and weeks before, and the entire family knew it was coming. Texas Kogane never came home from work. The suddenness of it, the quick switch from having a family to being an orphan. . .that had to be hard to deal with.

Especially alone.

While Hunk and Pidge headed down the lane, still talking, still laughing, still loud and stuck on their topic of movies, Lance crept past the low stone wall that marked the graveyard's entrance.

He stopped behind Keith just as thunder shuddered through the clouds.

Lance said, “Hey, Keith. Man, it's been a while, hasn't it?”

Keith’s shoulders jumped up, slightly, and he turned, glancing back. Even the overcast promise of rain couldn’t dull the violet of his eyes or hide the shadows cut deep beneath. The hollows of his cheeks. The hard way his mouth was set.

His voice came softly, “Lance?” 

“Yeah, hey. What’s up?” Lance winced, holding up his hands, feeling suddenly awkward. What was he doing? “I mean--I just--how’ve you been?”

Keith didn’t move. “Why do you care?”

Good point. 

“I just. . .I haven’t seen you around in forever, is all. Wanted to see how you were doing,” he said, a little put off. "I heard. . ." But he didn't finished his sentence. A glance at the gravestone told Lance all he needed to know.

Another round of thunder hit. Lightning struck through the clouds, bright, branching rivers. The quick shine of light didn’t do any favors to Keith’s expression. It didn't lighten any of the burden painted clearly on his face.

“I’m fine, Lance,” he said. He stepped away, opposite of where Lance stood.

Lance didn’t follow him. He knew better than that.

He stayed under the yew tree, sheltered beneath its heavy, needled branches, watching Keith weave through gravestones and plots of sunken earth. And Lance stood there even after Keith finally vanished, rain whispering down across his shoulders, until Hunk and Pidge found him and coaxed him away before the storm really started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> read this little pet project of mine! It's been a wild year since I started this fic, at first just something to help me through a difficult time that grew into this monster. (Pun intended? Absolutely yes.) Second off, though it's mentioned in the tags, I want to take a moment to reiterate that some Stuff goes down in later chapters. Gritty stuff, following what Southern Gothic is at the basics: classism, racism, homophobia and the effects these have on everyone involved. I know it's heavy stuff, and I wanted to keep true to the genre, if not soften the edges a bit. They play a part in the story, but Indigo Pull is not That kind of story. That said, I will be placing warnings above the chapters that deal with stuff like that!
> 
> Again, thank you! And, of course, I hope you'll enjoy the ride as much as I have. If I need to add additional tags or you want to leave me any suggestions, please feel free!


	2. Chapter 2

School pulled them along, week by week, a tedium of math equations and piling homework assignments. The baking August weather leaked into class and home, dragging everyone down into weary afternoons and barely relieving nights. Hunk couldn’t even find the joy in fixing the Firebird. Despite his earlier excitement about it, the pressing heat filling the cramped garage made him dread it more than anything else. Pidge, more often than not, complained about hot hands and sweating knees, which Lance wanted nothing to do with, thank you very much.

For him, it didn’t matter that it was hot: it mattered that it was  _ boring _ . 

For two weeks, Lance tried to spy a peek of a moving van parked in front of Lion Castle or an unfamiliar face in school. But nothing seemed to happen. Not a single weeping angel or weed moved from what small part he could see of Lion Castle’s main driveway, and everyone he nodded to in the halls were people he’d grown up with his entire life. Everything, it seemed, was staying stubbornly the same.

Even evening walks home from school had turned fell back into routine. 

He found himself looking towards the graveyard each time he walked past, and every time he saw the same neat row of stones and crosses (and popsicle-sticks). Keith kept away. Because of him? Maybe. Lance fell into thinking about that as much as he did about the mysterious new owners of Lion Castle.

Veronica was fed up with it first.

Pulling him aside to wash dishes one night, she told him, “Stop living in your head. Why are you so obsessed with it anyway?”

It took him a moment to figure out which she meant. The plantation, not Keith. He swallowed and pointedly turned back, drying the wet plate in his hands.

“No idea what you’re talking about, V,” he argued. It sounded weak even to his own ears.

His sister huffed. Her hands fell into the sudsy water, scrubbing at a dirty skillet. “If you say so. Just let things happen. Even if you spend all day thinking about them and worrying about them, none of that makes it happen any faster.”

He supposed she was right. He didn’t say anything, but he reached over and pressed an affection pat to her shoulder, easing the skillet out of her hands to finish the rest by himself. They were close enough to read each unspoken gesture, and Veronica smiled and teasingly flicked the last of the suds from her fingers. They freckled over his cheeks.

Later, when he’d crawled into bed, Lance frowned up at the ceiling, his eyebrows twisted in a worried knot. Hundreds of plastic stars were stuck on the plaster above him, glowing faintly green. Five years ago, he begged his siblings in two separate languages to help put them up. Veronica caved first, and she was the reason they were arranged the way they were, as close to real life as possible. Marco stood on a ladder himself to press them where they needed to go while Veronica pointed and directed him to nudge this one here or this one a little more to the left. All three of them took turns connecting them with thin lines of black paint, so if any of the stars decided to become meteors, they could help it find its way back home.

Lance looked up at it fondly now. In the dark, he couldn’t see the paint, his eyes just naturally followed where it would be, tracing constellation after constellation.

He was thinking about the girl again, if she was moving here at all. But mostly, he kept drifting back to the night at the graveyard. Keith didn’t look like himself. He looked, honestly, pulled thin and hollowed out, like he hadn’t slept in years or eaten a good meal in months. Lance didn’t know why it made him feel uneasy, but it did, and he chewed on his bottom lip, remembering the sharp cut of Keith’s jaw, the way he turned away.

He fell asleep thinking of that face and of run-rampant vines twined through iron gates.

His dreams were full of both.

And in the morning, Lance woke up tired but determined to do exactly the opposite of what Veronica had said the night before.

Today, he wasn’t going to wait until something happened.

Today, he was going to  _ do something _ .

_ ♰♰♰ _

_ Something _ ended up being as simple as breaking and entering. Who would have thought the hedges would hold his weight or would be easy to scale? 

The last embers of August heat licked at the back of Lance’s neck as he pulled himself up and over, sweat trickling down his temples and the swoon of his neck.

Jesus, he should’ve left his jacket at home.

Absently fanning himself with his palm, Lance surveyed the new perspective, scaling up the concrete angels as he stepped cautiously toward one. A weathered face looked back through the gaps of carved fingers, eyes blank, mouth turned coyly down. Moss grew along its arms, over its dress, and down over the carefully pointed toes. Lance grimaced and walked on, feet following the riverstone path way, up to the front porch.

The kudzu overhang shuffled gently when he approached, a thousand little leaves fluttering. It gave off a sound like whispering, a thousand little voices saying nothing at all.

Goosebumps pricked up his arms.

“Okay, so maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Actually, yeah, entirely a bad one, what am I doing.” Lance talked to himself, over his sudden growing worry and the kudzu conversation around him.

Cicadas screamed back that nightfall was still hours away.

“I’m only staying to look in through a window,” he assured himself--or the cicadas, maybe--and walked smartly up the stone steps to the concrete porch, leaves crunching underfoot, way out of season. “That’s all. Nothing else. I’m not going to, like, break in, really, just look.”

And so he did.

He pressed his face to the dusty glass, hands cupped gently around his face to shield out the sun.

At first, all he could see was the transparent haze of some dingy taffeta curtain. But after a few seconds, his eyes adjusted, refocused, and he saw sunlight pooling across the floor. Chairs and tables sat smartly in front of what looked to be an indention in the wall. A fireplace? Pictures hung on the walls, some crooked, some too sun-bleached to make out. The carpet, out of anything else, looked new and plush, a lovely shade of blue to compliment some of the couches. Books of all sizes were squeezed in every available bookshelf and were scattered across the floor.

There were small trinkets sitting neatly along a shelf, glittering frames or medals or  _ something _ winking in the afternoon light. More books piled on tables. A blanket, frayed and faded, draped over a stack of what appeared to be boxes.

Litter was scattered everywhere. Old newspapers, red Solo cups, fast food bags. Garbage bags left untied, open mouths spilling tossed chipped plates, records, and other things Lance couldn’t entirely make out. Discarded cartons and packages. Strips of old packing material--a kind of transparent cellophane tape--curled on the floor like snakeskin.

Behind Lance, in the gentle, dying, August wind, the kudzu urged him to hurry.

He kept looking, for a moment more, and with his hackles softly raised, his arms still broke out in goosebumps, he saw, or thought he saw, something start to raise up from a couch.

He jerked back.

“Oh shit--” He swallowed the rest--something definitely  _ was _ getting up from the couch. A blanket moved. A book fell off a table, hitting the carpet with a dull  _ thud _ Lance practically felt shoot through his own feet.

He leapt off the porch in a hurry, curses streaming under his breath, heart a hammer in his chest. He scaled the hedges faster than he climbed over them just minutes before, hands catching in the twigs, sharp leaves tearing into his skin. 

Lance dropped on the other side just as the front door to Lion Castle opened. The screech of its old hinges filled his ears, the low stomp of following feet. He booked it out of there, didn’t chance a look back, and ran all the way down the lane to Pidge’s house.

Without bothering to knock, Lance threw open the door and tumbled inside. He caught the lip of the door with his foot and kicked it shut. He was going too fast, moved too awkwardly to manage it, and he stumbled. He fell across the welcome rug, blood oozing from his ruined hands, chest heaving. 

And that's exactly how Matt Holt found him, just a scant few seconds after.

“What are you doing,” he asked, leaning over where Lance lay, head cocked slightly. From this angle, when Lance looked up to see his face, Matt’s long hair curtained around his cheeks, shadowing the confused squint of his eyes. Bae Bae, the family dog, rested, as usual, at Matt’s heels.

Lance pushed himself up. “Is Pidge here,” he asked, more startled and loud than he intended.

Matt jerked back, his light hair falling back. A thin scar cut across his left cheek, a souvenir he brought home from the war. He reached up to touch it like Lance looking at it made him remember it was there all over again.

“. . .Pidge? Yeah, upstairs. But why--”

“Thanks,” Lance cut across whatever else he was going to say and was gone, up the stairs, shoes still on and everything.

It said a lot about how well their families knew each other when Matt shrugged and walked back to his study without asking any more questions.

The Holt’s estate was the second largest in town, with Lion Castle beating it out only in sheer amount of land. There were no less than fifteen extra bedrooms, a half-dozen bathrooms, and even a gaudy, overused ballroom of sorts down on the main floor. Heirlooms of the family’s art collection decorated the wallpapered walls with their garish, golden frames. Small tables were stashed in corners to support solitary white vases of roses or irises, all freshly cut from the backyard gardens. The trim was real, polished maple wood. Each door, heavy mahogany imported from Africa, inset with brass doorknobs. Rugs from India and China covered the floors, all handmade and bought for a pretty, inherited penny decades before.

And then, Pidge’s room, neatly squashed between two other rooms of the same size, but entirely gutted of frills and plush, pastel comforters. It was a mess of a place, clotted full of empty soda cans and trash, coils of different colored wires, a scattering of nuts and bolts and rejected car parts Hunk handed over for inspection. There were crude schematics on the walls, margins full of unintelligible shorthand. Pinned-up charts of all sorts hung bedside them, Pidge’s quick writing coloring the borders gray. Maps of space, one a particular favorite of Lance’s that showed off a high-res image of one of Mars’ two moons. Printouts of code feeds no one other than Sam Holt could make sense of. And then, above an expensive set-up of a modded computer, strings upon strings of pictures hung up with clothes pins. From some of them, Matt and the rest of Pidge’s family (goldfish included) smiled back. And in others, printed selfies Hunk or Lance had sent to their group chat or posted up on social media. In a few, even Keith’s unsure smile or a flip of his hair made an appearance, alone or on the track field, or standing with Shiro at a Holt family barbeque.

It was like walking unsupervised into Pidge’s brain. A whole lot of organized mess, and whole a lot of naked love for the people he cared about.

As usual, Pidge sat, feet-up, in his computer chair, keyboard balanced on his knees. A pair of huge headphones sat askance on his head, leaving the ear closest to the door uncovered. He turned when Lance barged in, only slightly surprised.

“Hey?” Pidge started, but Lance, who had scaled the main stairwell in sprints of two or three stairs at a time, held up his hands to keep him from saying anything else as he caught his breath.

It didn’t work. He’d forgotten in his hurry that his palms were bleeding. Pidge jumped up from his computer, tossing everything down with a clatter.

“What the  _ hell _ , Lance?” It wasn’t spoken in disdain, but in concern. Pidge came up to him before Lance could huff out the reason he was there, and gently turned his hands around to see the damage on both.

Lance hadn’t noticed that he’d torn a jacket sleeve too. Muted stains of his own blood were turning the cuffs off-color. He pulled his hands away.

“Not now, listen! I went to Lion Castle--” Pidge shot him a look; Lance ground his teeth and continued, “--yeah, I know, but I saw something! There was someone inside!”

Pidge groaned. “Well, of course, Lance, someone is moving in, we’ve been over this!”

Lance scowled at him. “Nothing has happened for weeks! And it looked like they were cleaning up in there! I saw a person! They chased me!”

Lifting his own hands, Pidge rubbed his temples and walked back to his desk. Working with pliers and needle-sharp wire left Pidge at least a little cautious of cuts and scrapes. In one of the bottom drawers was a first-aid kit. He pointed to his unmade bed. “Sit down.”

Losing his earlier steam, and feeling, really, slightly overworked about the whole thing, Lance shuffled over and plopped down like he’d been asked, laying his hands knuckle-down on his legs. Pidge came over and sat beside him.

“I’ll indulge you, but, first, did they literally chase you or is this just Lance dramatics coming in to play?”

The astringent stung his skin no matter how gently Pidge swiped it on. Lance winced, fingers twitching.

“ _ Jesus _ , I think you could use straight alcohol and it would hurt less,” he whined, then said, “It  _ sounded _ like they were chasing me. I hopped the hedges and bolted, so I don’t know. I heard the door open, though.”

Pidge hummed. He changed cotton balls and started on the other hand. Lance winced again. “Dad hasn’t mentioned anything else about them, only that it  _ is _ a girl and her, like, uncle? Caretaker? I don’t even know, and I don’t think he does either. Maybe they hired someone to clean up the house? It has to be junked up in there.”

Lance cocked a brow at him and pointedly glanced around Pidge’s very,  _ very _ junked up room. Pidge at least had the good breeding to not look a bit ashamed.

“You know what I meant,” Pidge finished, tossing the used cotton balls into the trash. He found some ointment and began working that into Lance’s palms. It didn't exactly sting as the antiseptic had, but it smelled awful, bitter and heavy and like Pidge's anxiety.

It was as much for Lance as it was for himself. When even the tiniest bit anxious, Pidge liked to keep busy. Barging in like he had hadn’t been the smartest move on his part. He’d have to go find Matt in a bit and apologize to him, too. Lance didn’t mean to startle anyone, and, as he sat there, Pidge fidgeting ointment into his torn hands, he shrank inside himself, heavy with guilt.

“Yeah, I guess,” Lance muttered. “Sorry. About all this. I was being dumb. I shouldn’t have snuck into Lion Castle or came running up in here. I panicked. You’re the closest place I thought I could go.”

Next, Pidge wound a little bit of gauze around each. The cuts weren’t  _ that _ bad. This, now, was to keep Pidge’s own hands moving.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Lance. You’re welcome here whenever you want, being chased by a potential demon or not,” he teased, giving Lance’s fingers a final, affectionate squeeze. “Though maybe next time, call me or Hunk so we can at least try to talk you out of hurting yourself. Deal?”

Lance flexed his hands, testing Pidge’s wrapping skills. The skin beneath felt hot and achy now that he calmed down enough to notice it, though the astringent helped cut down the bite. That was twice now Lion Castle had sunk its’ teeth in him that month; he shied away from the possibility of a third time. Veronica’s warning about letting things happen on their own seemed like sage advice after the fact.

He carefully folded a hand into a fist and stretched it out towards Pidge, who didn’t miss a beat bumping it with his own.

“Deal.”   
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

“Do you think I have time for one more stupid thing,” Lance asked Pidge a couple hours later, as they followed the lane back up the hill, towards Lion Castle, and towards Lance’s home.

Pidge glanced over at him curiously. Sunset painted the sky like a fire, all oranges and hot pinks. His glasses reflected the colors, giving Lance two chances and ways to see it. “Depends.”

Pidge wouldn’t let Lance leave alone, and even threatened to call Hunk the moment Lance put up any resistance. As if he needed to disappoint any more people he cared about today. Lance balked, and now they both walked towards Lance’s house, a bag of Pidge’s things balanced on Lance’s shoulder: A change of clothes, his laptop, a couple of books, and his favorite pillow. Things like that. Lance lived on the other side of town and, feeling even worse, suggested Pidge just spend the night for all his trouble walking the way with him.

“I want to stop in the graveyard real quick,” he confessed.

“Why?” Pidge adjusted his glasses. “Wait, no. Are you thinking Keith will be there?”

Why was he so smart? Lance frowned and chewed on what he wanted to say, shifting Pidge’s backpack to his other shoulder, curling and uncurling his hands to ease the pain of them. 

“Yeah, maybe. I think I pissed him off last time we talked.” It felt weird to admit it out loud. “I’ll be quick. I bet he isn’t even there.”

“It was also weeks ago. You didn’t even do anything,” Pidge told him.

“That’s the kind of the point.”

They walked the rest of the way to the cemetery in silence, Lance’s attention on the paved road under his feet, and Pidge’s attention on the drooped way Lance held his shoulders. Crickets sang their nightly lullaby to fill in the empty spaces.

As Lance predicted, the graveyard was empty of the living. Headstones sat quietly in their plots, flowers decaying at their thresholds. Fireflies blinked and winked from the yew tree branches like little stars. 

He let out a breath. “Well. Alright. Nevermind.”

Pidge bumped him with an elbow, pointing. “You need your eyes checked. He’s over there.”

And sure enough, the bright red of Keith’s jacket seemed to pop out of the peeling tree trunks. He stood with his back to them, as he had on that night weeks ago, under the last of the shade. Again, his shoulders were tense with grief, and even from the road, Lance saw the way Keith’s fingers dug down into his elbows.

He passed Pidge back his bag. “I’ll be right back.”

On gentle steps, Lance carried himself to the plot Keith stood near, squinting in the dying light to read the name engraved on the polished granite.  _ Texas Kogane, beloved father and hero _ , it read, followed by dates too close together. People shouldn’t die that young.

Keith had to know he was there, but he didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t turn or look or say anything. Lance plucked at the gauze covering his hands.

“It’s right, you know,” Lance said at last, speaking up a bit to be heard over the sounds of nightfall. The frogs, the crickets, the determined cicada-calls.

Keith looked little better than he had before. There were still too many shadows on his face, too much weight sinking down his shoulders. His slender fingers hooked in the fabric of his jacket and twisted. He didn’t seem startled to see Lance there.

He didn’t speak. So, naturally, Lance kept talking.

“His--that.” He pointed at the gravestone. “It says he was a hero. And he was. He saved a lot of people that day.”

The fire tore through the town on a daught-filled summer evening, blazing bright with warning. Houses went up in flames immediately, yards curling into black char in seconds. Texas ran into three houses by himself to usher families out to the safety of the streets. The fourth collapsed moments after he entered it. Lance had seen the sky that night, painted red and heavy with smoke, while his own family stood outside on their porch, his older brothers and dad gone to help put out the fire.

They came home. And with them, the news of those who wouldn’t.

Keith looked away. “Saved everyone but himself,” he said, somewhat bitter, but mostly just tired. 

He didn’t know what else to do. So Lance did what he would do to Pidge or Hunk or his siblings--he reached out and squeezed Keith’s shoulder.

He felt Keith go rigid, body wound up tight enough to snap. His teeth grit down--Lance saw the jump of his jaw when he did it, and snatched his hand away just as Keith reached up to shove it off.

“Hey! Sorry, I wasn’t--”

Keith caught his wrist. 

His touch wasn’t gentle--it was all shaking fingers and force. He turned over Lance’s hand, eyes lowered to study the gauze covering his palms. The rust of dried blood colored the center slightly red. Lance tried to ease his arm away.

Keith blinked like he was clearing his eyes of dust, and hurriedly dropped his hand. He took a heavy, shuddering kind of breath. “What happened,” he asked, voice low, rumbling like a kind of unfriendly thunder.

Lance frowned and shoved his hands in his pockets, shaken. “I tore them up on some hedges. Don’t worry, I don’t think I bled on your jacket or anything.”

“That’s not--” Keith let out a breath and turned, stiffly, to focus on the gravestone again. His next words almost sounded pained, “They look pretty messed up.”

“Nah, Pidge doctored them and they feel better.” Lance’s attempt to ease the sudden tension didn’t even impress the bats flitting over head.

He took a step back. “Sorry, to bother you again. I really should learn to not barge in on things.”

“You. . .weren’t.” Keith regained himself. He half-turned back towards Lance, the weird clench in his jaw easing up. Even his shoulders relaxed. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you.”

“It’s cool. I shouldn’t have touched you with bleeding stumps but here we are,” he quipped.

Keith wasn’t amused but, really, when was he ever.

“Anyway, have a good night, man. I’ll, uh, see you around.” He lifted a hand in a small, hurried wave, and dropped it just as quickly, hiding it back in his pockets.

He spun around and headed back towards the road, where Pidge definitely wasn’t eavesdropping on their entire conversation and hadn’t walked halfway to him the moment Keith snatched his wrist.

He heard the first set of soft, halting steps, then nothing, and finally Keith saying, as Lance had almost made it back to Pidge, “Thanks. For what you said about my Pops.”

Lance turned around, surprised.

Keith lifted a shoulder. He stood out from under the tree, the last of the day streaking through his black hair like embers of fire or a child’s watercolor picture.

“It means a lot.”

Lance smiled at him.

It might’ve been the shadows playing tricks on him, or maybe he was just a little sentimental over what Keith had just said, but Lance would have sworn on his  _ abuela _ ’s battered Bible that Keith smiled back.

Maybe this hadn’t been a stupid thing to do after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm going to drop in a warning beforhand: Chapter 3 is when the hate crime happens. I'll place another warning at the start of that chapter as well, so keep a look out!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it: The one with the hate crime. The chapter starts off with it, and it's peppered throughout in conversation within the chapter, but it's the starting two paragraphs that go into the most detail. If you need too, jump down to the third paragraph, if you'd like to avoid it.

When Sheriff Iverson found Adam Wynn dead early the next morning, beaten nearly beyond recognition and left in a ditch, the first person he thought to call was Shiro.

Not to identify the body--Iverson knew the kid personally, and had given him the job as deputy the day he’d turn in his impressive resume. Nevermind the uniform the body wore, or the lights of the only other cop car in town flashing blue, blue, blue over the crime. The gore. The glistening, unnatural bow of his skull. Iverson found his glasses nearby, wireframe bent, stomped into the ground. Adam’s hands were left untouched, his ring glittering on his left hand, a band of gold he always wore.

Shiro arrived at the station within the hour. He, ironically, already wore grieving colors, a black shirt tucked into black pants held around his waist with a shiny, leather belt. He looked stricken, pale, as he stepped into the small room. His hair, mismatching shades of his natural dark and a streak of stress-induced white, dripped the early morning rainfall onto the carpet.

“I want to see him,” he demanded at once, before Iverson could speak.

The sheriff leaned forward in his chair, looking as fatigued as he felt. It’d only been a few hours but it felt like he just lost years of his life in a single morning. 

He shook his head, watching Shiro with his good eye. The other, milky blind, focused as close as it could. “You don’t want to see that, boy. Trust me.”

Shiro insisted he did. And, to be fair, it was only right, considering. 

Indigo Pull knew Shiro as a War Hero first, and the citizens loved him for the stories he brought, the lessons he taught, and the lives he saved volunteering at the Fire House any chance he had, even though he lived well put of city limits. The Holt’s had a room just for him on their first floor, easily accessible and decorated to the nines. They felt like they owed him much more. Their generosity slipped from their hands to his whenever they could find an excuse. Dinners for when he stayed in town on the verge of becoming gallas. Gifts of clothes or shoes or cash, plain and simple. Shiro insisted they didn’t need to go to such lengths, that all he wanted, needed, was their continuing friendship.

It didn’t seem to equal out to two saved lives or Shiro’s missing arm.

The three of them, Samuel and Matthew Holt and Shiro, were all assigned to the same military troop. It was lucky they were: Shiro’s quick thinking saved them more than on one occasion. 

Really, the bomb should have killed them all.

Instead they came home with scars and PTSD and phantom pains, not in tight-sealed boxes labeled with identical, folded flags. Sometimes Shiro’s right arm ached, when there was nothing  _ to _ ache. Most nights, Matt tried not to sleep because the nightmares only got worse. Samuel Holt would fall into long stretches of silence, eyes open but far away, remembering things he kept from his family.

One of the only people who knew this as intimately as the three did lay on a cold, steel table at the coroner's right this very moment.

Shiro didn’t flinch away when he looked down at the body--his dark eyes filled, and his throat bobbed, swallowing hard. He pressed his hand to the glass, a matching, gold ring worn on the same finger. “ _ Oh, Adam, _ ” he said, voice as full of heartache it could be before breaking.

This was the other reason the town knew him, and why he stayed away. The three town preachers tried not to like him, and for two entire months after Shiro and Adam were engaged, they hosted sermons of hellfire and damnation for the sin of being in love. It didn’t sway many. Though in the undertow, there were always a few so disgusted and so dedicated they took arm with metal pipes and tire irons to beat it out of a person. But never in Indigo Pull. Until, that is, now. 

Shiro dropped his hand.

Iverson, taking a step forward, addressed Shiro as kindly as the situation allowed. “If you’ll come with me,” he began. “I need to ask you some questions.”

War-tempered nerves threaded through broad shoulders, along one arm and the stump of another, hidden discreetly as possible in a tied-up shirt sleeve, tensed. Brought home like another medal or military badge, and worn just as proudly. 

Turning away from the sterile view, Shiro met Iverson’s stare with his own. Politely, he said, “Of course,” and followed him out.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


And so, the day went on.

For a grace period of a few hours, the news of the murder stayed low, kept in tight circles, the seldom witnesses to the cop cars blue lights saving the topic for lunch breaks or phone calls. People went on to work, took their children to school, cleaned house, waited. Maria McClain folded a small knot of anxiety into the family breakfast, her eggs slightly overdone, the toast on the deeper side of overdone. She didn’t know then, about what happened, but as she stood at the stove, eyes focused outside, skimming overcast skies, she said to no one, “Something just ain’t right.”

Veronica seemed off too. Pidge, slumped down in a chair, looked like he hadn’t slept a minute over three hours last night.

Usually full of chatter, this new day left the McClain’s quiet. Lance looked around at everyone, noticed frowns and creased brows, and ate his breakfast in quick bites. He didn’t know what to say. None of them did. The air, humid and thick, pressed down on top of them, smelling of char from the blackened edges of their bacon. Pidge and Lance exchanged glances.

Warm hands passed Lance his lunch bag, and then lingered, cupping his face, squeezing him by the cheeks.

“Bad air today,  _ hijo _ . Be careful, would you?” She dropped her hands to pick one of his up, squeezing it lightly, thumbs brushing over the scabbed scrapes and cuts dusting his knuckles and palm.

Lance squeezed her fingers reassuringly. “I always am,  _ mamá _ ,” he told her.

His hands said otherwise. His reckless behavior the day before said otherwise.

Pidge stepped in, all grins, adjusting his backpack. His pillow and change of clothes were sitting on Lance’s bed, to be picked up later, after school. “Don’t worry--Hunk and I’ll keep an eye on him, Mrs. McClain.”

She passed Pidge his own lunch, like some tiny reward, though, really, she would’ve packed him one all the same. She patted them both on the shoulder and watched as Veronica fell in step with them as they walked down the lane, her hands clutched in front of her chest.

When they had disappeared from her line of sight, she looked up at the spattering rain clouds as if they could tell her what was wrong, then took a step back in the house, shut the door and tried not to think too much about it.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Monday mornings are always the worst. But Monday mornings full of dark stories and skies crowded with rain, and schools crammed with anxious students and empty desks, are far, far  _ worse _ .

Lance honed in on it at once. The atmosphere. The shivering, pale-faced students. And the others, the ones laughing loudly in the halls like they’d just heard the best joke. He fell back to Hunk, tucking his hands into jeans, and murmured low enough for him to hear, “I guess Mom was right.”

Hunk glanced around, humming a nervous tune under his breath. “Yeah, I think so, but like, what’s up?”

They stalled at their lockers, exchanging books and notepads and, in Lance’s case, fishing one of the few pens lost within. Pictures of his family covered the inside of his locker door, all of them beaming back with bright, happy faces. It didn’t sit well with the overall mood, and he snapped the door shut with a loud  _ bang! _ Hunk, whose locker was right beside his, flinched a little.

“ _ Easy _ , man,” he huffed, pressing a hand over his heart. “Today is, like,  _ not _ the day.”

“Sorry.”

It came off clipped, but Hunk, who’d known him for longer than he hadn’t, understood what it meant. Lance was distracted, his blue eyes scanning the hallways, his long arms folded tight over his jacket. Pidge had left ahead to go ask his biology teacher something and promised to be right back. That was over ten minutes ago. The bell only had three until it buzzed.

“He probably got caught up. You know how he gets,” Hunk tried, shutting his locker door. Quietly. It barely clicked back in place. “We’ll be late if we wait up.”

Lance frowned. “Yeah, but, we said we’d be here.”

“He’ll understand.” Hunk nudged his shoulder. 

They waited for a long moment more. Lance, in that small time, studied the ugly scratches on his hands. Hunk tried to pretend he wasn’t doing the same.

Finally, they pushed away from their lockers and headed towards class. They joined the rest of the murmuring student body, the jumble of their conversations white noise, too numerous to make sense of. Lance caught small words like  _ awful  _ and  _ a lot of blood _ and he felt a little sick the closer they got to their homeroom. Was he hearing things right?

Hunk paled. Lance took that as a bad sign.

They shared homeroom together first thing in the morning; Pidge, moved ahead as far as he could be, had been given the highest mathematics class the school could offer--AP Calculus. The three wouldn’t meet up again until lunch. 

Lance dropped to his desk in the back of the room. Hunk, as always, on his right. Three seats in front of him, someone turned around, half-leaning towards everyone behind him. He wore a smile like he’d been told he’d find a million dollars stuffed in his pillowcase when he got home.

“Did you guys hear the news,” James Griffin hissed. His hands fell around the back of his chair, expression smug. 

He didn’t have a chance to finish. 

The bell rang; their teacher walked into the room, hands held up. Everyone titered off into a hush. Lance shot Hunk a look, saw a glance of him raising his shoulders, and looked away.

“I know you all have heard by now,” he started, grim, low voice filling the space. The murmurs picked up again. Lance heard the same clips and pieces, though one word in particular shot right down to his spine:  _ murder _ . “But try not to let it distract you from your school day. Instead, let’s try to make this as good of a day as we can.”

Several students exchanged odd looks.

“I’d like you to welcome our newest student,” the teacher went on to say, stepping back towards the door. “Come on in.” He gestured to someone outside, and eased back so she could walk in.

The first thing Lance noticed was her hair. It gathered in a thick braid hung over one shoulder, and it was so pale the fluorescent lights bleached it nearly cotton-white. She was  _ tall _ , lean, arms and legs the deep tan of heritage and sunshine. And her eyes--even from his desk, Lance could see the brilliant kaleidoscope blue of them. 

She stood front-and-center, her arms folded around a pile of shiny, school-issued textbooks. And she smiled, warmly, like the day hadn’t dawned bleak and rainy and full of bad news.

In a clear, accented-voice, she told them, “Hello. I’m Allura d’Altea.”

_ Allura _ , Lance thought, sitting a little forward in his desk. He saw Hunk do the same. In front of them, Griffin sit a little straighter. One of his friends, Ryan Kinkade, leaned back, shoulders tight.

Pidge had been right. And now, after weeks of waiting, the mysterious girl who inherited Lion Castle finally made an appearance. 

She was beautiful.

This entire time, Lance pictured a shadow, twisted as the histories Lion Castle housed. Someone as bad and stone-backed as the terrible soil. Someone that would haunt the halls just the same as any bad story.

Not this. Her polite little head tilt towards them as she said her name spoke of well-raised manners. Kindness. And, yeah, money too.

Lance sat back.

Hunk leaned across the aisle, a hand cupped around his mouth to catch and direct his whispered, “Whoa.”

She took a seat near the window, carefully sitting her stuff down. Lance watched her, brow creased, and he wasn’t the only one. This Allura stood out, from her hair down to her practical, worn-in boots. For all it was worth, Allura pretended she didn’t notice, and sorted her books, putting some away in her bag or leaving some out on the desktop. She thumbed through one, gaze fixed on the text.

Homeroom basically translated to a free period unless you were, like Lance, behind on homework. So during the course of the hour, a few students went to Allura’s desk to introduce themselves, James Griffin one of them. Listening to him get quietly excused was one of the funniest things Lance had ever heard and getting to watch Griffin’s ego deflate was even better. The only one Allura took up with was another girl in class named Romelle. Apparently, Lance learned through eavesdropping on their conversation, the two were long distant cousins. They chatted quietly about similar branches in their family trees and schedules to see if they had any other classes that aligned.

And through  _ that _ , Lance learned they all--Pidge and Hunk and himself--shared P.E. with her the last period of the day.

Maybe then he could apologize for sneaking on to her property the day before. She was probably who he saw through the gauzy curtain. The back of his neck heated up. Had she seen him jump over the hedges? He wore the same jacket today, still blood-stained and torn.

He looked at his scratched knuckles again, thinking of those hedges and their teeth, Pidge’s worried fidgeting and of Keith’s behavior at seeing Lance’s bandaged hands. Lance kept Pidge up most of the night trying to talk about what had happened, going over the way Keith grabbed him, and both of them played at figuring out why he’d done it.

Pidge chalked it up to spooking him.

Lance thought it had to be something else.

From the road, Pidge couldn’t have seen the way Keith’s face twisted up. Even standing right next to him, in the dying twilight, Lance wasn’t exactly sure what he’d seen. But he felt Keith’s hands close around his wrists, that quick pressure, and heard his voice change.

Lance wiggled his fingers. His hands didn’t ache anymore, which was good, and the pink heat they had kept all night had faded away by morning. They looked bad, cross-hatched with thin, red lines, but at least it didn’t hurt to hold his pencil.

He lost the rest of class thinking about that and talking to Hunk about it. Hunk looked just as unhappy as Pidge had when he saw his hands. It was probably a good thing Pidge  _ didn’t _ call him the night before. Having to hear it from one of his friends  _ and _ his mom had been brutal enough.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


They knew something was wrong when they found Pidge at lunch. For one, he had holed himself away in the library instead of the cafeteria, slouched as far as he could be in one of the tiny chairs pushed around a carbon-copy table. He’d picked one half-hidden in the bookshelves, and he had his head buried, arms curled around his ears.

“You called it,” Lance huffed to Hunk as they went to him. 

They plopped down on seats to either side. Hunk set down his tray. Lance, a bag identical to the one Pidge had left on the table.

“Hey, Pidge,” he said, reaching over to poke the top of his head. “Wake up, man, it’s the best time of the school day! Lunch! And, I don’t know if you checked, but mom made  _ empanadas  _ for us.”

“Aw, man,  _ what _ .” Hunk reached over and took Lance’s lunch bag, fishing one out for himself.

“Hey!”

“No, no, nope. I didn’t get on about your latest bad plans until this morning. I deserve this for being kept out of the loop.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Can you believe this, Pidge?”

Pidge made a non-committal noise and didn’t look up.

Quieter, Lance said his name again, “Pidge? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, peachy. I’m just. . .tired, I guess.” He finally pushed back from the table, rubbing at his eyes, glasses sliding partially up his forehead.

Lance would have been satisfied with that, but then Pidge reached and jerked the front of his shirt, adjusting it. And adjusting it. Trying to make the loose fabric even looser. 

Hunk sat down his food. “Hey, buddy, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” Pidge insisted. He dropped his hand in hurry, like he’d just realized what he was doing. He grabbed the lunch Lance’s mom had given him and busied his hands with pulling out the contents. Hard boiled eggs, two  _ empanadas _ , and a small container of homemade thumbprint cookies, their pressed-in centers filled with a glob of  _ dulce de leche _ . 

He broke under their stares. “Okay! Okay, maybe there is something--you heard, didn’t you?”

Lance was getting sick of that phrase. He  _ heard  _ that a dozen times, but no one got around to tell him what exactly it was he was supposed to have heard.

“What are you talking about?”

Pidge pulled a cookie from the bag. He ran his fingers around an edge, considered eating it, but just sat it down again. Rock salt caught in the caramel shifted the light. 

“You remember Adam that used to sub here? Shiro’s fiance?” Lance and Hunk nodded. Pidge plucked at the collar of his shirt again before he could stop himself. “Well, uh, they found him dead this morning. He--it was bad. Real bad. They took Shiro in for questioning.”

Lance felt his stomach jerk. The food in front of him, so lovingly prepared by his  _ mamá _ , suddenly looked as appetizing as sawdust.

“ _ Christ _ ,” Lance whispered. “What do you mean  _ bad _ ? Like--like--”

Pidge’s voice was quiet, “Like a hate crime. His face was bashed in.”

Hunk looked like he was going to be sick. He pushed his tray away from him. 

Lance scooted his chair back, hands flying up to this hair, combing it back. “Holy shit.” 

They knew Adam outside of school; they’d all talked to him at the Holt’s dinners, seen him with Shiro at the estate or walking around town. They knew him as kind, though a little strict, especially when he filled in for their teachers back before he became Iverson’s deputy. But, whenever he came around, Lance could go ask him questions about schoolwork and receive kind answers. Pidge couldn’t count the number of times he found him sitting downstairs with Shiro, the two bent over the glass chess board--to be inclusive, turns were taken to ask Pidge which strategy would go better. Often times, the games ended in stalemates. Hunk knew him more from the garage and the conversations they would have about engineering, conversations that helped nudged Hunk in that direction for college, if he ever went.

Hunk looked down at his food. He had a hand pressed over his mouth, brows sunk low, shoulders wound tight. “What about Shiro? Have you heard anything about him? Is he--okay?”

Pidge pulled his phone from his pocket and dropped it on the table, tapping a thumb against it to light the screen. His eyes were lost behind the shine of it on his glasses. “Matt said he’s doing all right, considering. He’s at our house now, and I think. . .I think Matt was saying he and dad were going to fetch clothes and things from his apartment for him. Shiro’s going to stay with us a while.”

Lance dropped his hands. “What about Keith,” he blurted out.

Hunk and Pidge looked at him. It was Hunk who said, “What?”

“Does he know? Shiro and him are close, right,” he asked as he met each of their looks. “I mean--he’d probably want to be there for Shiro. You know?”

Pidge studied Lance a little longer, and gently shook his head. “I don’t know. Matt hasn’t mentioned him.”

Lance bit his lip. He went quiet, and sat forward again, the heels of his palms dragging across his face. They sat like that, not eating, lost in their heads, their own worries. Hunk repacked Pidge’s lunch for him when he didn’t eat anything. Lance threw his down into his bag. And Pidge tried to be discreet as he text back Matt with shaking fingers.

They might have known Adam Wynn, understood how much Shiro loved him, but to grieve him felt like something they weren’t allowed. It wasn’t like they were exactly friends. So they grieved the way he’d been found, the implications it meant, and wondered who would be that heartless to murder somebody for who they were.


	4. Chapter 4

  
  
  


Pidge left school early, before fifth period.

It’d been Matt’s suggestion, Pidge insisted, and promptly forwarded a screencap to their group chat to let Hunk and Lance know. But, secretly, Lance felt like Pidge needed the excuse to go home anyway, and was glad he did.

But because of it, Lance felt the rest of classes drag on. Even P.E. became a chore of playing dodgeball and running laps. He couldn’t find any motivation to talk to Allura, or to apologize to her for something she might not even be aware of. He and Hunk sat on the bleachers and talked quietly amongst themselves the entire hour, Lance bouncing his leg the entire time and Hunk watching him in a careful, cautious way. 

The end of the day couldn’t come fast enough.

Hunk and Lance made plans to meet at the Holt estate at six, giving each enough time to let their parents know what was up and for Lance to gather Pidge’s left things. Sunset was in full, multi-hued swing when Lance met Hunk at the garage attached to his house, the sky painted with magenta and the first whisper of violet overhead.

They barely made it to the next street over before Lance leaned over the covered dish in Hunk’s hands, tapping the glass lid with a single, inquisitive touch.

“What’s that,” he asked, craning his neck to inspect it. Whatever it was smelled buttery and cheesy, stomach-crampingly delicious.

“It’s for Shiro,” Hunk explained. “Grammy’s special casserole. She always makes this when something bad happens. She insisted I take one with me.”

Lance leaned back. “Huh. I guess that makes sense.” 

Hunk shrugged.

The morning rains cleared earlier in the afternoon, and in their absence, the humidity crept in to make up for it ten-fold. By the time they crested the hill, passing by Lion Castle and all its stoic angels, its disturbingly open gate, Lance and Hunk were both sweating through their clothes.

Lance, by habit at this point, chanced a glance over, peeking through the iron gate. The house stood dripping, kudzu rolling the last water off its leaves. The statues were dark grey, soaked with drying rainwater. It looked the same as ever. 

Then Allura stepped across the porch. Her chin rested in her hand, her expression turned inward, eyes far away. She’d changed since arriving home, into something vaguely dirty and well-loved, though her trademark boots were around her feet. The noise of her tapping heels drew Hunk’s attention, and he looked over too.

Maybe one of them made a noise, a partial  _ hello _ or greeting. Or maybe she felt their stares on her like inquisitive mosquitoes. For whatever reason, Allura looked up, blinking rapidly as if to clear her thoughts, and her eyes snapped over to where the two of them stood.

Lance went cold, immediately feeling guilty.

Hunk, who  _ hadn’t _ been so bold as to trespass, lifted an unsure hand.

All her expensive charm flooded back in at once. She didn’t say anything to them--she just raised her hand and waved back, a small smile replacing her frown.

“She seems nice,” Hunk said, adjusting the casserole dish as they moved on. “Totally not what I expected, to be honest. But nice.”

“Did you see the way she turned down Griffin? Funniest thing I’ve seen in my life,” Lance agreed. He looked at the gravestones as they passed the graveyard, not so much for the sake of the dead but for the unspoken hope to find the living.

Today it was unmistakably empty. 

“Oh. Yeah. I heard. He made a big deal out of it in English to anyone who would listen.” Hunk rolled his eyes. “Seriously, that guy.”

“Yeah. Maybe he’ll get knocked off his high-horse now and stop acting like such a pompous dick all the time.”

Thing was, James Griffin had every right to be as prideful as he was. His family grew up well-off, and they owned a good chunk of land right off the river, and, some say, a slice of the river itself. His father oversaw one of the oldest banks in town and was a deacon at Indigo Pull’s sole Baptist church. And, even though Lance couldn’t stand the guy, James scored second highest in school, just under Pidge, who no one could touch. The whole Griffin family was as smart and polished as a coin collection, and worth four times as much.

Sometimes the McClain’s made Christmas a work of shared stories and hand-me-downs. Depending on the soil, the flooding rains or draughts, if the cows bred or the chickens kept laying, if the goat stopped being stubborn over her milk for a week, the McClain’s livelihood rested on the backs of a lot of things that could go very good or very wrong at any given time.

On Lance’s fifth birthday, the only thing his  _ mamá  _ could afford to give him was a day spent at the riverside. Together, they rolled up their pant legs into cuffs, and stepped through the puzzle of slick riverstone, toes sinking in green algae and mud as they wadded into a shallow area a few feet away from the bank. Little fish, quick as darts and colored silver, circled their feet; some were bold enough to nibble Lance’s toes before they fled. With her hands as his--because when he saw them, he couldn’t convince himself to reach blindly into the water to find them--his  _ mamá  _ caught mean-looking crayfish. Their little, jointed bodies buckled and scuttled over her palms when she brought them to the surface for Lance to see, their bead-black eyes twitching, small pinchers snapping the air.

That was her gift to him: A day full of enough sunlight and laughter to stick. 

Really, it was all Lance wanted, all he ever wanted. Memories like that were cheap to give and priceless to have.

The Griffin’s could pay their bills, but did they have those kind of days? Lance doubted it. 

Hunk reached the Holt’s door first and pressed the doorbell.

They waited. Deep in the grass, a locust droned on and on.

“Do you think Pidge is okay,” Hunk asked after a moment. His brow was knit expressively over his eyes, which flicked over to Lance. “He looked messed up during lunch.”

True. Until last year, Pidge had perfect attendance. He also went by something else, dressed a little different, and tried to do what was expected. The sort of thing he hated now, actively avoided, however much Colleen Holt pressed. 

Pidge skipped past Sophomore year due to his grades. Honestly, he could be attending whichever college he wanted to right now. Yale. Dartmouth. Matt, too; they were nearly a matching set, smart as whips or tacks or encyclopedias, pick your descriptor from the list provided. Instead, he hung around, slugged through high school with an ease that made Lance think it was all for them. This little town could spawn community when it wanted, and living within walking distance from everyone helped. Lance had known Hunk for ten years, Pidge for seven. They’d been thick as thieves for as long as any of them could remember. Lance and Hunk and Pidge, the Garrison High trio, always seen together and rarely apart.

They were the first people Pidge told about what he was going through.

It’d been a frost-crusted day in January, a few days after the first. School was out for an extra day due to the snow, and the three of them walked around that morning, building snow forts and making themselves into angels on the dazzling white ground. The whole time, Pidge kept to himself, unusually quiet, his hands forming a battalion of snowballs. Dozens. Then close to a hundred. Too many. 

Lance didn’t press. Hunk gave him space. But they both knew what those nervous hands meant; they waited for Pidge to say what was on his mind, what bothered him enough to feel the need to keep busy.

Finally, he did, quietly, like saying it any louder would fracture their friendship apart like the scum of ice over the pond come early March. He said, “I want to go by Pidge now.”

Presently, Lance shifted his feet, reached a long arm forward to try the bell himself. He told Hunk as he turned towards him, worrying the inside of his cheek, “Yeah, I noticed, too. But this. . .this whole thing--” He couldn’t say it. The words didn’t fit right in his mouth. “It’s scary. It means--what if there’s going to be more?”

Pidge called them  _ hate crimes _ .

Lance didn’t understand how anyone could hate someone so badly the only remedy was to kill them.

The door clicked and fell open, and Colleen Holt stood before them, face taunt, sadness rimming her eyes in red. She smiled when she saw them, and stepped back to allow them in. 

“There you two are,” she said, as if she’d been expecting them to arrive any minute now.

“Hey, Mrs. H, we’re sorry to bother you.” Hunk held out the casserole dish. “Grammy sent this over for everyone.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “Katie. . . _ Pidge _ is in the parlor with Shiro and Matt, if you’re looking for. . .him.” 

Lance barely held back a wince. He set the bag holding Pidge’s things down by the door.

Excusing themselves, they went down the long, painted hallway to the parlor Colleen mentioned. A quiet murmuring snuck past the open door before they reached it, all the words dressed up in gentle concern. Lance heard Pidge speak, but his words were lost somewhere in the floral wallpaper and the distance between them.

He hopped up from an ottoman when he saw Lance and Hunk enter the room. A baggy, heather grey sweatshirt hung loose on his shoulders, down nearly to his kneecaps. It swallowed him alive, and hid all the angles and curves of his body in swaths of fabric. It had to be Matt’s, either borrowed, stolen, or specifically given.

Like Mrs. Holt said, Matt was there too, Bae Bae lounging at his heels. He had a hand in her fur, stroking in a timed rhythm, a distraction, another Holt hand-me-down. He didn’t look up at them. His eyes were far, far away.

Samuel Holt sat by Shiro at a sizeable table leftover from an era that liked to carve heavy table legs to look like curled vines. Flashy. Ornate. The type you’d think of when someone brought up the reason tablecloths were invented. The high shine of the deep, warm wood matched the likewise-made side tables and desk, confessing a commissioned set. Two crystal glasses of scotch sat sweating on the tabletop, one almost empty, the other entirely untouched.

Shiro sat with his head down, forehead cradled in the center of his palm. If Lance hadn’t known him before, hadn’t seen the light and life in how Shiro carried himself even after the war, Lance would have mistaken this as how Shiro had always been--shoulders swooped down under a weight no one else in the room could guess at, a sorrow deep enough to fill the room like the shifting, sinking pressure before a heavy storm.

Lance raised a hand to everyone, those who looked and those who didn’t, and said a soft voice, “Hey, guys.”

Hunk stood beside him, and he looked from Pidge’s outfit to Shiro’s bowed frame and Matt’s visible nerves back to Lance. His eyes shone from all the things that needed help that he couldn’t fix. His soft heart must be breaking. Lance nudged him and stepped deeper into the enormous room.

With the moment broken, Hunk strode forward and grabbed Pidge first, drawing him close, hugging tight. He said something to him, pitched low, and whatever it was, whatever he said, spilled right into Pidge and made him sniff. Pidge hugged him back, then Lance when he came up, and when he drew away, his hazel eyes gleamed behind his glasses, bright from unshed tears.

Lance knocked a fist against his forehead. “Remember our deal?”

Pidge swatted his hand away, but then held out his own, closed firmly into a fist too. “Yeah. I do.”

They bumped knuckles. Hunk, who’d heard it from both, hit their joined hands with his own, to complete the circle. 

“Me too, guys. We’re in this together, right?”

Always.

The delicate moment, spoken in undertones, was watched over by Sam, and they found him smiling a small, warm smile. He told them, “It’s good to see you kids. Thank you for coming.”

“Yes.” This, from Shiro. He finally lowered his hand and sat up, a little straighter, much as he could with grief weighing him down. “Thank you.”

He looked off from the newsprint photos, from the pictures tucked in frames stationed around the estate. His eyes were red, deep shadows cut beneath them. His shoulders drawn and tense. And when he tried to smile, it appeared forced, not quiet reaching more than his mouth. However, everyone appreciated the effort, and they all returned it, in their own, fleeting ways.

Lance was first to smile back, then Hunk. Pidge reached up under his glasses to rub at his eyes. 

“It means more than you know,” Shiro told them all, and he looked at every person in the room as if to prove to each person that they helped in what small way company could in bad times like these.

“It’s no problem, man, of course,” Lance told him. He stepped up to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “How’re you doing?”

Shiro reached up and grazed his fingers over Lance’s, the touch brief, another unspoken  _ thanks _ . “As well as I can be.” 

Sam lowered his glass, now empty, the ice cracking and clinking, no dregs left to steep in. He said the hard things that needed to be said, easing that small responsibility away from Shiro himself. “If you’d like to join us, we’re having a private service for Adam in a few days, preceding his cremation. It'll be small, out in the gardens. Shiro thought it best.”

Shiro’s smile faltered. Broke. His shoulders once again sank down. “Yes. He loved your gardens. The. . .lilies, in particular.” He trailed off, cleared his throat, scraped composer when it tried to crumble to dust.

It didn’t exactly work. The exhaustion of the day was too strong, Shiro not in best condition to deal with it to start.

The silence that came after left them all shuffling, staring off at the floor or to a fixed painting on the wall. To be polite. To not burden Shiro with the act of trying for their sake. Let him grieve. Let him break down. He deserved that much, more.

Matt swept his fingers through Bae Bae’s fur, the only movement in the room. He glanced up, looking at Pidge, then Shiro, and rose to his feet the same moment someone beat their fist bloody against the front door.

Pidge and Matt jerked, startled. Matt’s shaking fingers dug into Bae Bae’s ruff to steady himself. Lance pivoted like the blows sent him spinning on dizzy feet, his arms up for balance. Hunk bit a noise behind clenched teeth.

Shiro looked up, but otherwise, he and Samuel Holt weren’t as surprised as the others. Sam rose to his feet, hands braced on the table, and his face took on a new, wary cast.

Collectively they heard the heavy door open, Colleen say something that cut off, then a flurry of hurried footsteps paced at a run headed in their direction.

Keith burst through the doorway within seconds, jacket a splash of color slashing through the room, red as a cut, as roses, as the seeds of ripe pomegranates. He brushed past everyone who stared, ignored Sam’s greeting, and only glanced once toward Lance before heading right for Shiro. 

He stood up from his seat, his arm already outstretched, and grabbed Keith two steps quicker than Keith made it to him, jerking him towards him that final distance. 

“There you are,” came Shiro’s soft voice, caught in the flyaway static of Keith’s hair. 

Keith’s hands fisted in Shiro’s shirt. They shook as badly as Matt’s. “I'm so sorry, Shiro, I tried to find you sooner, but I didn’t know where you were, where else to look--"

Shiro shook his head, hushing him. “What matters is you’re here now.”

“I should’ve been here sooner,” Keith bit, voice raw in his throat. He drew back, eyes a shine of violet. If grief could transfer, that touch did the trick. Their mannerisms adopted the other: Keith crumbled now under his own, self-decided failure to find Shiro quicker than he had. And Shiro seemed calm, if for nothing else than to abate Keith’s growing panic. 

Lance studied Keith’s face and saw when the first tear fell. His heart leapt up in his throat--what did that mean?--and he looked away, ears pink, knowing this moment was not meant for an audience. He caught Hunk and Pidge’s eye, tilting his chin towards the door. Hunk nodded, Pidge looked away. They left together, giving Keith and Shiro the parlor to talk; Samuel and Matt’s footsteps ghosted after them, as they found their own rooms to haunt.

The trio crept upstairs to Pidge’s room, hiding in the open space of it. Lance sat on the bed, Pidge tucked in his favorite chair, Hunk sunk inside the dip of an oversized beanbag. They kept the silence with them, sharing looks instead of conversation, until, at last, when the hour read late on Pidge’s bedside clock, Lance said, “Come here, guys.”

Hunk rocked to his feet at once. “Please tell me it’s platonic cuddle time because it has been a  _ day _ .”

Lance patted the comforter. “Come on, buddy, you know it."

Hunk pumped a fist, and play-jogged over, leaping onto the bed at once. “ _ Hell _ yes.”

He flopped face-first on Pidge’s unmade bed, on the twisted mound of a green blanket and a hoard of mismatched pillows, some with same-green pillowcases, some bare. Lance chuckled and patted his back.

Pidge sighed and came over, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Lance gave him one second to move, and when he didn’t, Lance hooked him with an elbow and dragged him down, squeezing his body between his own and Hunk’s.

“Good, that’s it, there we go.” Lance threw a leg over Pidge’s. Hunk reached an arm over Pidge and Lance’s back. Together, they squeezed Pidge between them.

“Guys,  _ stop _ ! I can’t breathe!” Pidge’s attempts to push back weren’t really anymore than mimed actions. He didn’t want to leave. For the first time all day, he actually, truly, felt like laughing.

Hunk beamed. “There, back to normal. I was scared we’d have to reboot you. Maybe replace the motherboard. Real scary stuff.”

“Yeah. Or, like, do a virus check on you, figure out all the bad stuff slowing you down and--” Lance poked him with each word following. “-- _ get. Rid. Of. It. _ ”

Pidge snorted, swatting his small hands at them both. “You two are morons.” Spoken with absolutely no malice. The words were honey-sweet and kind. 

“We know,” Hunk and Lance chorused, behind grins and the upward swoops of their arms. They pressed closer, and as the long night drew on, the three listened to the sounds the old house made, its croaks and creaks filling all the crevices and corners. They heard the footsteps of the others pass the halls. A conversation dipped low, fashioned in Shiro’s low voice and Keith still-panicked hush. The Holt’s slow footsteps as they found and left their rooms. And soon, nothing else besides the hum of Pidge’s computer and their own steady breathing.

As it often happens, in the lull after storms or heartaches or very, very bad days, Pidge and Lance and Hunk--all twined together, shoes-knocking-shoes, knuckles brushing over sleeves or elbows, tucked in the safe company of each other--fell asleep.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lance woke first thing in the morning, the sky wisteria-colored as the day started to rouse around them. The room was still quiet, his friends still asleep, breathing the even tempo of dreaming. He spent more time looking down at them in the gloom than was probably necessary, picking out what details he could. Pidge’s glasses, crooked on his face, which he gently eased away and placed on the bedside table. Hunk’s head, half-hidden in a pillow, the open ‘o’ of his mouth slipping out a snore every now and again.

To them, for them,  _ because  _ of them, Lance smiled and felt whole.

Carefully, he lifted Pidge’s arm from around his middle and inched past, swinging his feet to the floor. He waited, listened, and rose up, rubbing sleep-dust from the corners of his eyes.

The clock read a little after 5. His friends comfortable sleeping told him he still had hours he could join them. Really, with yesterday still fresh, with Pidge’s new, surfacing anxiety, Lance didn’t have the heart to go to school. 

They didn’t bring clothes besides, or their school bags, their books. Lance never finished his Algebra homework or looked through the readings he needed to do. At the time, he assumed he’d be back after supper and have plenty of evening left to finish what he needed to do. At the time, it didn’t seem to matter.

Creeping downstairs in the darkened halls of the Holt estate, it still didn’t matter.

Where did school place in all this? Lance felt detached, summer-minded, like each weekday full of repetitive classes was pointless. Did an A in math make him less susceptible to the world’s lack of mercy? Did picking up a school-assigned reading heal Shiro’s broken heart? Did struggling through the same classes, dealing with the same people, walking the same hallways take away the burden of Pidge trying to be Pidge?

Lance didn’t want to bother. Not today. Not now. Not with Pidge curled upstairs wearing a three-times-too-large sweatshirt like he could hide away in it forever.

He shoved his hands in the pocket of his jeans, heading downstairs, shoes silent on the plush carpet, knowing his way even in the dark. He lived here as much as he did his own house, as much as Hunk’s--they were as much his brothers as Marco and Luis. His family stretched out for miles; his hands never felt large enough to hold on to them all.

But he would try. For Pidge’s sake. For Hunk’s. For Shiro or for Matt or for his own siblings. Or maybe, yeah, maybe even Keith, too.

He felt warm again, when he thought of that, like his ears wanted to turn pink. He didn’t understand it, not really, or he ignored what it  _ could _ mean. It happened every time he thought of Keith standing alone at the graveyard, spending his open days mourning. Of before, when they raced around the school track, sneakers hammers on the concrete, arms pumping, Keith’s back ahead of him, or behind. The timestamps. Their panting breathing afterwards, when coach read out the results.

Lance stopped. A few dim lights were lit to bank back the worst of the shadows. Much like theater lights, these were dull, orange bulbs in lamps or tucked in the overhang of the wall, hidden along seams of the woodwork, giving off the impression they glowed with some internal source. There was a sense of magic about it all; the colors off-kilter and warm, not true like in daylight. Reds were more umber, yellows bordering rust, greens like hearty browns and blues non-existent. They turned violet, red-toned, under the bulbs.

He had the sense of walking in a dream, that fuzzy-understanding of reality. If a door had bent backwards or a window melted sugar-syrup, Lance wouldn’t have been surprised, only interested in the show. 

So when a shadow unhitched itself from the wall by the grandfather clock, Lance didn’t start, his heart didn’t kick up, he simply watched it come closer.

It stopped directly beneath a light, and Keith took on the color of its hue. His jacket lost the harsh red of blood, gained the muted promise of autumn. His hair looked almost brown. His eyes, black.

Lance had to make himself look away.

In some distant way, he wondered if he was still sleeping.

Keith studied him in the light, expression hard to read. Lance caught himself looking up at him again, and this time, he kept looking.

“You’re up early,” Lance teased, because, wasn’t he doing the same? “Or up late. Whichever, I guess.”

“. . .the second one makes more sense,” Keith admitted, brows knit. He folded his arms, hands cupping his elbows, as he thought about it. “Yeah. That one.”

“Yeah, no, I get that. I’m shocked Pidge and Hunk and I fell asleep like we did.” He rubbed his face, groaning suddenly. “Aw, man, I told mom I’d be home last night too. I wonder if she called.” He pulled out his cellphone. It didn’t light up. He scowled down at it and stuffed it back in his pocket. “Well, okay then. Nevermind.”

Keith chuckled, or close to it. Really, it came off like a huff of air, almost like a sigh, but quicker. Quieter. Lance’s ears  _ did _ pinken then.

“Okay, wow, rude,” Lance huffed, strutting past him, leaving the glamour of the moment behind. 

He misjudged how close Keith actually was when he moved past, and their shoulders brushed. Keith caught his arm again, fingers circling his wrist. Not like before--this touch was deliberately soft.

“Hey--wait. I wasn’t making fun of you,” he said, voice low, serious, and a little. . .worried? Lance had to look at his face again to see if that was right. And--yeah, yeah, it had to be. Keith was stitched up in similar ways as the night before, leftover panic at the corners of his mouth, his eyes a little wide, shoulders tense underneath his jacket. 

Lance cocked a brow. “No?”

“No,” Keith agreed. He was still holding onto him. He looked down at their arms, and carefully, turned Lance’s hand over, intentive. “It was--you kind of deflated when your phone didn’t turn on. Whole body. That--was why I laughed.”

Lance didn’t see how that was funny. “You laughed because I  _ deflated _ ?”

Keith made an aggravated noise, his eyes narrowing. “No! Just--you were so--dramatic? About it? I don’t know. I. . .no, nevermind, sorry, forget it.”

Lance didn’t say anything. Besides, in his frustration, Keith started tracing the healing lines of his palms with his thumb, and when he stopped talking, Keith lifted their hands further up, closer to the lamplight.

They looked a little bad still, scabs drawn over scabs, a perfect after-image of how hedges were a good line of defense. Seeing them brought up all the shame of earning all those cuts in the first place. The whole scoping out Lion Castle for its demons. The person rising from the couch that, at the time, seemed more monster than anything else. His blind panic. Pidge’s worry. 

Lance withdrew his hands.

Keith blinked, slowly coming back to himself. His eyes really were black in this light, deep as inkwells. “Your hands look better,” he said.

Lance curled his hand into a fist, released it, wiggled his fingers. No pain. Only a slight itching as the new, tender skin under the scabs shifted. 

“Yeah, they weren’t too deep in the first place. I guess I got lucky.” He lifted a shoulder.

Keith tried a smile. “. . .that’s good.”

They stood there a moment longer, quiet. Lance felt it as uncomfortable; Keith didn’t appeared not to notice.

Lance broke first. 

He jerked a thumb toward the kitchens. “I was going to grab a drink. Want anything?”

Keith rolled his lips into a line. Thinking. The concentration working over his face was at once comical and heartbreaking and endearing. 

Lance spared him. “You can decide along the way.”

The kitchen took them out of pre-civil war era decorum and into one of sleek, chrome appliances and white tile, just the faintest, faintest touch of the same mahogany wood trimming the baseboards. It held everything you might need to start a restaurant, from a six-eyed stovetop to a pizza oven hidden in the wall to a very expensive espresso maker that took up more space than what it could do was worth. Colleen Holt existed here as Samuel did in the warm-colored parlor--but instead of books and inherited crystalware, she had pulled flowers from the garden to fill vases along the counters and windowsill. Irises to lilies, roses to the last yellow daffodil. A palette of petals. Bursts of bouquets.

Here, her touch existed in the battered tin-box of family recipes displayed on the polished countertop, in each knife-scar maring the cutting board, on the fridge face adorned with family photos. Some were soft-edged and bent with age. Pidge and Matt were together in nearly all of them, save one from the start of Matt’s military career, where he smiled proudly at the camera, dressed in a regalia of olive green. It came from a time where sleepless nights didn’t crease under his eyes, or bring worried lines to his face, or steal the smile from his mouth.

Lance jerked open one of the top two doors. Cool air and white light spilled out. This matched the rest of the sharp, white-blue lights glinting off the stove from overhead. Exactly the opposite of the lobby area, this light sharpened and exacted, more truth than sunlight itself.

Keith’s hair went nearly violet beneath it. His eyes so alive and vibrant it took Lance a full five seconds to realize he’d been staring at him.

That Keith had been staring back.

In a rush, Lance cleared his throat, turning back to the fridge, pulling something out just to break the awkward moment.

He faced Keith again, bottle in hand. “So. Did you decide? If you want anything, I mean.”

Keith blinked at him. He tilted his head just so, the line of his neck curving, and Lance glanced there too, at the peek of collarbone slipping from the collar of his now-ruby jacket.

“. . .you came down here to drink  _ mustard _ ?” 

Lance started. Looked. And sure enough, a bright yellow bottle rested in his fingers.

_ Ah. _ His cheeks went pink; his ears, nearly the same red as Keith’s jacket.

“Well--well, yeah! Obviously! It’s a secret Cuban tradition, didn’t you know? Couple sips of this and I'll be out like a light in no time.” Bullshit. But to hell if he wasn’t standing his ground now, after making the slip up in the first place.

There was no mistaking it now, not under this lighting, not with while the two of them stood so close: Keith smiled, softly, the corners of his lips raised up.

Lance’s insides kicked again. 

“That so,” Keith asked as he crossed his arms. He was watching, waiting, maybe, for Lance to follow through.

His stance read like a challenge, the way that smile easily melded into a smirk. Expectations glinted in his purple eyes, the hitch of his brows.

Lance was staring again. His fingers closed tighter around the container of mustard. 

He popped open the lid with his thumb.

This was going to suck.

Keith snorted at him, that same airy-huff of laughter. “No way.”

“Okay but if I do,” Lance cut in, gesturing with the bottle. “You’ll tell me why you were standing downstairs in the dark like a weirdo. Deal?”

He watched some of the mirth fade away from Keith’s face, the smile flee. Keith seemed suddenly lost, like Lance’s question had made him think back on something he didn’t want to, or that hurt to remember.

Keith grit his teeth hard enough Lance saw his jaw tense. It was the same as the night in the graveyard, with the storm knocking overhead. The clouds, the second skin of humidity made the action seem threatening. Now, in the middle of the Holt’s fancy kitchen, it looked more like a self-defensive tic to keep himself from breaking something.

Or from crying.

Lance lowered his hand. “Hey, man, what’s up?”

Keith didn’t say anything. He rubbed his neck, pointedly staring at a portrait of a cornucopia on the wall. And just like that, he turned and walked out, leaving Lance blinking after him.

Lance at least had the grace to put the mustard back before following him.

In the hall--now almost too dim to see in, Lance’s eyes quick to adjust to the hyperglow of the kitchen’s lighting--he found Keith by the grandfather clock again, arms tight around himself, facing the wall. 

Lance stepped up beside him.

Really, the Holt estate was less a home than a museum, stocked full of memorabilia from each generation that had lived there before. Much like Pidge’s room was an explosion of everything he loved--technology, astronomy, his family, his friends--the house had been deliberately stuffed with everything the Holt’s held dear: their financial security, sure, but more than that, it broadcasted a family bond so strong it would eventually outlast the house itself.

For now, it held all sorts of pictures, so, so many pictures. People Lance couldn’t name looked back at him from the walls wherever he went, either from film or brushstroke. They had Pidge’s similar features, the Holt hazel eyes, or were so different Lance wondered how they were related at all.

Here, surrounding the space around the clock, there was an arrangement of more photographs. Not of family, not really. This wall, in particular, had been turned into a shrine for close friends. Lance was here, in stolen moments from pool parties, or linked elbow-to-elbow with Hunk. There they were, all three of them, Pidge standing in the middle, dressed sharply in matching suits for their Junior prom. They went stag together, and partied amongst each others company better than they would have with dates. And there, Keith looking a little unsure, standing beside a laughing Shiro. Seeing Adam and Shiro in another, clasping hands, felt a little too tender and Lance looked on.

He chanced a glance at Keith’s face, his intent stare, and traced it back to another photograph. 

The first thing he noticed was the sky--bruise purple with blooming blue clouds, a thunderstorm at dusk. The few trees in the distance were wild with wind, bent, limbs twisted. Someone had placed Christmas lights there, the blinking white ones, and their scattered light caught like stars around a handful of people in the middle. 

It was a distant shot, done so to squeeze everyone in. A family of four, all dark-haired. Lance recognized a younger Keith’s face, baby-fat still held in his cheeks, and Shiro, nearly a teenager, holding his hand. There were two adults standing behind them, a woman and a man unmistakably Texas Kogane. Side by side, Lance realized their likeness all over again, their dark hair, the same smile.

He studied the woman. Lance took a step closer, this time pressing against Keith, who stood near the wall. His chest hit his back, his chin hovered over his shoulder as Lance craned for a better look.

The woman was drawn in sharp angles, even while smiling. Lance always thought Keith looked like his father, but now, seeing this, Lance knew he’d been wrong. Shiro took after Texas. Keith took after his mother. 

“Oh, whoa, you look just like her,” Lance breathed.

She had the same untamed sense of the storm stretched above, her body shape the same as Keith’s lissome frame. Fight-ready, strong. Muscles corded her forearms and calves. She was pretty the way wolves were pretty--dangerously and unapologetic. 

Keith rubbed at his arm. “You think so? People always say I look like my Pops.”

Lance barely had to turn his head to see his face. He made a small act of studying its features, like a scientist would a petri dish. “Well, that too. But more her. See?” He pointed at her face, turning to tap that same finger on Keith’s jaw. “That’s the same. You have her nose, too.”

He dropped his hand suddenly and leaned back. Away. A polite step backwards. 

Keith spared him a curious look but didn’t comment.

Warmth flooded Lance’s belly.

“Shiro--ah,” Lance cleared his throat. “Shiro’s the one that looks like your dad.”

The grandfather clock kept ticking. Lance’s heart raced.  _ Oh boy _ , he thought, tucking his shaking fingers into his jean pockets, hiding them.  _ This is something I don’t want to deal with right now. _

Amber light danced over Keith’s face as he turned his head, looking back over the family photo framed on the wall. Somewhere in the shadows melting off the back of the grandfather clock--which chimed a 15-minute warning until 6--Keith said, “Like my mom?” so soft only the mice might’ve heard it over the din.

They stayed like that for a long time, long enough for the sun to rise and stretch its rosey fingers across the floor. Long enough Colleen wandered downstairs and spotted them, huddled like that, one looking at the wall, the other watching his back. She greeted them with a familiar softness and even brushed her hand over Lance’s shoulder before disappearing past the swinging kitchen door.

She shocked Keith out of his reviere. He snapped his head up and glanced back at the windows, and, slower then, to Lance.

“I gotta go,” he said.

He didn’t go to the front door like Lance expected. No, he went left, down a small hallway, where it ended in a set of double-doors sealing off Shiro’s room. Usually, more often than not, these doors would stand open as an invitation for company. Now they were tightly locked except, maybe, for Keith himself.

Sure enough, the sounds of creaking hinges followed soon behind, like the echo of Keith’s feet on the carpet. 

There came a final, soft  _ click _ as the door shut again.

Then nothing at all.

Lance stood in the blooming morning light, turned towards where Keith had gone. His fingers didn’t shake. His insides had cooled. It was still a lot of things he had to shift through, to understand, but in that single moment, he decided on one thing.

He left his spot by the clock and walked into the kitchens for the second time that morning. This time, alone. 

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Painted black--Shiro’s favorite color--the room absorbed any sunlight, tucked it away, locked it nice and neat in a little box. Keith liked it for more than that reason, but mainly because Shiro’s achievements shone throughout, more now than ever. Boxes of his belongings sat in one corner; through the long night, as Shiro slept in broken fits, Keith carefully unpacked some of the things the Holt’s had stolen from his apartment in the city. Things like Shiro’s war medals, his badges of honor, and--though it would hurt Shiro to see--photos of him and Adam together, at once happy and smiling and whole. Keith hoped he wouldn’t be mad.

He sank to the floor, on a pallet made of the odd quilt and leftover comforter (easy to come by here, where the manor practically oozed them out by the dozens). He folded his legs, and rested his hands on top of them.

The dawn tried harder to knock down the windows.

Shiro never did like waking up late, but Keith preferred sleeping in. Maybe that’s why he’d put up the thick curtains, for Keith’s benefit. Shiro was always like that, doing things solely to make Keith’s life a little better. 

It was a habit Shiro had since before he left, an unyielding want to take in unloved things and give them homes. Like the three-legged stray cat he had for years. Or the discharged ex-airman he ended up almost marrying.

Shiro didn’t need to love Keith. They were only half-brothers, not full. But Shiro treated him like they had been raised in the same house, taught the same lessons, made the same memories outside of Christmases and Birthdays and every-other-weekend stays. 

Keith stared at the hunch of Shiro’s shoulders tucked under his blankets. Shiro still seemed deeply asleep, whether dreaming good dreams or bad, so instead of waking him up to talk, Keith curled up, pressing as close to the bed as he could.

Morning would come, and it would go. It would turn into a blisteringly hot afternoon and a cool evening full of rain. But, for now, at least, it was this: it was Keith nestled on his blankets, eyes shut to help remember his mother’s smiling face, and his fingers careful tracing the line of his jaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOPS! Sorry for the delay, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo right now and lost track of my days.


	5. Chapter 5

Tuesday passed like a snap, hours drained away in quiet companionship. Hunk and Lance stayed the entire day holed up in Pidge’s room. They mostly co-oped a few of Pidge’s new games, or walked outside before the evening rains came in, or picked on a topic for playful debate. Colleen even ordered them pizza for supper, a special treat.

Six a.m. edged into six p.m. uncomfortably fast. Hunk pointed it out first, almost unconsciously, gesturing at Pidge’s bedside clock with the dripping corner of his pizza slice.

“Huh,” he’d said, leaning back on his hand. They sat in a circle on the floor, vultures picking at the disappearing contents of the box. “That went by quick. How’s it nearly seven?”

Pidge glanced up from his task of peeling away every leftover pepperoni glued to the cardboard with cheese. He frowned suddenly. “Oh. Yeah. I guess it is.”

All day, Lance and Hunk tried every way they could think of to keep Pidge’s and their own minds off school. With the simple comment, all the off-placed anxiety came flooding back. Pidge’s, especially; he stopped eating and left the box alone.

Lance shot Hunk a look. Hunk lifted up his palms.

“Sorry! It’s just--I’ll need to get home, soon,” he said, biting his lip. “And it’s getting dark.”

“It’s alright, buddy, we’ll walk together,” Lance promised, as he leaned forward, over the box, to take Pidge’s hands. “And  _ you _ , listen up. If there’s something going on we need to know about, tell us, okay?”

They both suspected it. Trouble liked to hang around, no matter how Pidge dismissed it or played a bravado. Lance and Hunk knew that certain people at school called him the wrong name on purpose, said things just to crawl underneath his skin. Bullied him in the few spare moments between class, at times the three of them were split all over the building.

Pidge huffed and jerked back his hands. “I’m  _ fine _ . Seriously, why do you think I wouldn’t tell you? I always have before.”

Lance didn’t argue that what he said was only half-true. 

Last year, the very day Pidge first cut his hair short--and, then, looked so much like Matt it was uncanny--someone got it in their head to slam Pidge full-body into a locker. Lance found him after, saw the bruises crawling up his arm and discoloring his knuckles, and wouldn’t leave Pidge alone until he gave him a name. Not that it did any good: James Griffin’s family had their hands too deep in Indigo Pull to weed him out successfully. Ratting him out to the principal, the proof of what he did purple-blue-black all the way up to Pidge’s shoulder, only got Pidge sent off to the nurse. No one wanted to risk upsetting the Griffin’s, not with all their well-placed money funding certain programs, backing certain school sports teams.

Besides, James Griffin was too nice of a boy to ‘do something like that’, as if his daddy’s godliness was something passed down into his own genetic code. And with ‘such a bright future ahead of him’, there was no way anyone wanted to risk ruining the rest of his life. Who cared if Pidge became the collateral damage for that? Most people refused to call him by the right name anyway, so nevermind, nevermind, and it was swept under the rug, all neat and tidy, dutifully ignored and glossed over. Easy as that.

Thinking about it only made Lance furious all over again.

“Okay, sure, but you better promise,” he told Pidge, jabbing each word against his forehead. “I swear to God, if that Griffin guy is saying shit again--”

Pidge swatted him away. “He’s  _ not _ ! Can’t I just be upset a family friend  _ died _ ? Is that  _ okay _ ? Why are you thinking that something is going on with  _ me _ now?”

Lance gestured at him, full body. The sweatshirt. The nerves. This sudden defensiveness.

“Take your pick!”

Pidge leapt to his feet. His hands folded into fists, shaking. “I  _ said _ nothing is going on, so shut up about it, Lance! Why do you always want to make something out of nothing?  _ Stop it _ .”

That hurt. Lance flinched back.

Hunk stood up the same moment Lance did, and he placed a hand on each of them, one against Lance’s shoulder, the other braced on the top of Pidge’s head. “Whoa! Whoa, okay, guys, no. This is really, actually, the worst time to jump down each other’s throats about nothing--”

“See! Even Hunk agrees!”

“What? Wait! Don’t put words in my mouth, Pidge, that’s isn’t what I’m saying--” 

“Lance is doing it to me! Tell him to stop it then too!”

“Oh, I am  _ not _ ,” Lance bit. He let out a breath, gritting his teeth. “I’m  _ worried _ . I can be worried about by friends, can’t I?  _ You _ were.” 

He flashed Pidge his hands, the healing lines hatching his palms, and watched Pidge’s eyes tense, his mouth fold into a frown. As he turned away, Pidge small arms folded over his chest and squeezed; Lance dropped his own arms down, the fight draining out of him.

“I’m only going to say this last thing, okay, so listen up.” Pidge didn’t move, which Lance took as a good sign he was likely to get. “I don’t want to see you hurt, that’s all I’m saying. This whole thing--what happened to Adam, it’s got us all messed up. And I  _ know _ how people are around here. I  _ know _ how Griffin is to you. I didn’t forget. So, that’s it. If he’s starting shit up again, tell me. That’s all, okay. What did we say to you last night?”

“He’s right, Pidge,” Hunk told him, and softly so. He slipped his hands away from both of them when their fire snuffed out, and held them close to himself, fingers twisted around the front of his shirt. He cast a wary glance between the two of them.

They were all in this together. That meant the good and the bad and anything else that could happen. It meant the ease of last night and it meant  _ this _ , this sudden bickering, and whatever came after. It didn’t matter. They would shoulder it through, side-by-side-by-side. Together.

Pidge relaxed first. He didn’t say anything--he could be stubborn-footed at best sometimes. He kept his head turned from the two of them, staring off at the far wall, looking even smaller tucked away in Matt’s giant hoodie.

But between the three of them, he was the one who moved first.

Pidge lifted his hand, curled into a fist, and left it there. An invitation.

Lance sighed, relieved, and brought his own up.

Hunk finished the ritual, knocking all their hands together, his knuckles brushing against Lance’s and Pidge’s at the same time.

Lance sat back down, legs folding under his weight, and picked up the last slice of pizza. “Alright, alright. Not that that's taken care of,” he said, the words still somehow sentimental around a mouthful of food. The Lance charisma at its finest.

With a thankful laugh, Hunk sat back too, and then Pidge, who wasted no time snatching the slice right out of Lance’s hands.

“Hey!”

“For emotional damages,” Pidge told him, grinning big.

Lance let him have it. 

It was a small price to pay anyway.

_ ♰♰♰ _

Shiro kept to himself during the passing days, and, because of that, so did Keith. They stayed in Shiro’s room at the Holt’s, door shut and locked. Sometimes Shiro would venture out for tea or a glass of water, but Keith usually found any excuse to do it for him. He snuck out in the evenings, bleary-eyed like he’d just woken up, and grab food from the pantry after getting Samuel or Colleen’s permission. Arms full, he’d vanish back into the room, and the door once again locked behind him.

Nobody asked questions. Grief hit everyone differently, after all. If Shiro only wanted the company of his brother, then that was what the Holt’s would give him. Space. A place to stay. And, when the time came for it, they would be there to offer anything and everything else they could.

To pass this slow-going time, they worked on arrangements for the service, did all the hard work so Shiro didn’t need too. Colleen prepped her best lilies and her spanning gardens to accommodate the small network of people who’d show, clearing out room for them, ordered the appropriate amount of rental chairs. Samuel shouldered the contact work, called the Sheriff for information--any he could be given--and discreetly covered any charges the funeral cost. Again, these were small things for them to do, almost necessary. Any time the Holt’s heard Shiro shuffle about, caught sight of his tied-off shirt sleeve, or saw Matt lead Bae Bae around, hands shaking even during this small calm, their resolution turned marble-strong.

Anything Shiro needed would be given to him, asked for or not.

Pidge became a liaison of sorts, delivering updates to Lance and Hunk while they walked to school. Through him, they learned the rocky circumstances of retrieving Adam’s body from the coroner. The investigation had no leads, no weapons, just Adam himself, and that only went so far. Pidge told them quietly, using the noise during lunch to cover his voice, that they were only partially sure it had been a pipe that had done it. Currently, a small team of volunteers raked the bottoms of all Indigo Pull’s scummy ponds and the riverbed. Teams were called in to scour the forest for clues. They looked for anything heavy and metal or out of place enough to investigate.

A hate crime had suddenly turned into an even darker thing, if possible: premeditated, and carefully covered up.

Indigo Pull buzzed in rumors like flies in the thick of summertime.

The weight of it made Lance’s skin crawl.

He spent most of his own evenings at Pidge’s. He tried to act nonchalant about it, like he really wanted to hang out and distract Pidge from his worries. Which, yeah, there was a lot of truth in that, and Pidge knew it, but then Pidge also knew that something else was closer to the center of Lance’s radar, something that kept bringing him back.

Something--or  _ one _ \--staying hidden in a downstairs bedroom.

For one, Lance tended to ask a lot about him. Discreetly. Slipped in to the very tail end of questions about home-life or how Shiro was and, hey, how’s Keith doing, by the way? Like that, rapid-fire and quick, a little too punctuated by Lance’s gesturing hands, a little too aloof.

Pidge, for the most part, answered the best he could. Which was to say, he told him mostly the same line of, “I’m not sure.”

Keith kept to himself even if he ventured out into the house. Politely mannered, Keith tended to tiptoe around the open areas the family liked to gather and spend time. The parlor, the dining room attached to the kitchen, the den. Places he was likely to run into someone who would notice him and start up an awkward conversation.

It happened once with Pidge the night he’d skipped school.

After Lance and Hunk left, Pidge wandered into the pantry for snacks, chips and candy to have on hand upstairs. Keith walked in to find him with his arms loaded up with food, too many things either precariously balanced in his arms or stuffed in the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie.

Pidge had shot him a look that dared him to say anything. “What,” he’d asked defensively, bags and wrappers crinkling as he walked.

Keith shook his head and very pointedly made his expression blank. Pidge had seen it, though, the soft touch of amusement around his mouth, like he was lost remembering an old joke. “Nothing. . .do you need any help? . . .Carrying all of that?” He gestured vaguely towards Pidge’s arms.

“Yeah, sure, why not.” Pidge pressed what he held against Keith’s chest, watched him fumble a bit to grasp it all before something slipped, then turned to the fridge again now that his hands were free. He took out an obnoxious amount of sodas and water. “You just spared me a trip.”

Keith seemed a little unsure. “. . . glad I could help.”

They went up to Pidge’s room together. Keith didn’t say anything the entire way, but the silence wasn’t strained or heavy. It fell naturally the way nighttime falls after a long day, well-needed and calm.

He didn’t didn’t linger, or really answer Pidge’s questions on how he and Shiro were. A lifted shoulder was the only response Keith gave before he left the room, closing the door behind him as he went. He looked a little disappointed.

Pidge told Lance this, and for whatever reason, Lance just grew more agitated.

He crossed his arms, and his leg did that bouncing thing it did when he was upset. The bleachers made an awful amount of noise with each movement, and Hunk reached over, settling a hand on his knee.

“Dude, stop, it’s loud enough in here as it is.”

None of them liked gym class. It either bored them to death or forced them actually get up and run around the long rectangle of the room. Heaven forbid they line up for dodgeball and suffer through the hour as the three of them became last picks and then were divided unevenly between teams. Two friends on one side of the floor, one alone on the other, forced to stand with people he didn’t much like.

If schools allowed for torture, then this was the method they decided on.

Today it was easy, a free time to walk a lap or two or play friendly rounds of basketball. So, naturally, the three booked a quick lap around the floor to say that it’d been done, then high-tailed it up the bleachers for the rest of the period, away from the floor so the chances of getting hit with a rouge basketball slimmed.

Lance settled down. “Sorry,” he muttered, dropping his hands to his knees.

“What’s with you anyway?” Pidge asked him. He sat back so his legs hooked over the actual bleacher seat, his back pressed against the one behind him, butt hovering over the gap between. He wore his hoodie again, and his hands were shoved inside, fingers locked. “Why are you pent up about it?”

It was funny to watch his ears go pink like that. “I’m not pent up about anything!” 

Hunk patted his knee. “Sure thing, buddy. But you are asking a lot of questions about Keith suddenly. Like, a lot-a lot. What’s up?”

Lance looked away from them. Down on the floor, Allura’s near-white hair stood out, and his eyes followed her while she darted around, actually participating in a basketball match. Griffin was there too, trying his best to steal the ball from her when she had it, though his jerking, odd movements were all wrong and poorly timed. Obvious attempts to have an excuse to press close to her.

“You guys are acting like I don’t shut up about him,” Lance huffed.

At the same time, Hunk and Pidge answered, “You kinda don’t.”

“Hey! I do  _ not _ !”

Hunk chuckled. “Alright, alright, but didn’t you guys used to have that big rivalry thing going on? That track team thing? You used to bring up Keith a lot back then, too.”

“Yeah, all the time,” Pidge chirped. “About how his times were always better than yours and how you wanted to, how did you put it? Prove to him that you were on his level? Or, wait. Wasn’t it the other way around? You wanted him on  _ your _ level?”

Lance’s leg started to bounce again. “I hate you guys.”

“We love you too.” Hunk’s arm swooped around him and brought Lance to his side in a quick hug. Lance bristled, then settled, and finally looked back at them.

“I just. . .I talked to him the other night, and I know he’s upset because Shiro is, and I have something to give him,” Lance admitted, finally. His leg jostled.

Again, Hunk reached over and pressed his hand against his knee. The action was as second-thought as blinking or breathing. “What’s that?”

Lance scratched the side of his face. “Just. . .something. It’s no big deal. I just thought I’d see him out and about now. I guess. . .well, yeah, of course it has to be bad. Especially for Shiro.” His face fell a little. He looked out of place, a little distressed, and a bit ashamed of himself all at once. “What am I worried about anything for? Ignore me, guys. It’s nothing, really.”

He stood up. Hunk and Pidge exchanged glances.

“What do you mean? We were picking on you, is all--wait, where are you going?” Hunk started to his feet, but Lance waved him off, using the advantages of his longer legs to scale down the bleachers an easy two at a time.

“Bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

They watched him go. 

“. . .what was that all about,” Hunk murmured, his hands up in his own lap, thumbs rubbing together. “Do you think we overdid it a little? Aw, jeez, I didn’t think he’d take it to heart.”

Pidge frowned. Inside the hoodie pouch, he twisted his fingers, distracted. “. . .Maybe. I don’t think so. I think he’s just being Lance again.”

“That can mean, like, fifteen different things, Pidge, I’m going to need something more solid than that or I’m going to stress out about it until he comes back.”

“He’s caught up in something,” Pidge explained. “Like he was with Lion Castle until Allura moved in and the mystery was solved. He’s found something else to try and figure out.”

Hunk tilted his head, brows knit. “‘Something else’ being Keith?”

Here, Pidge fell quiet for a moment. One of his feet started swinging, his shoes knocking together.

“Not exactly. I think it has to do with Lance himself.”

Hunk uttered a soft, “ _ Oooh _ ”, like that made perfect sense.

They waited, but Lance didn’t come back after all.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Hunk knew an apology when Lance gave it, and so when Lance wandered in his family’s garage later that same evening, hands loaded with a fresh, hot plate of Maria McClain’s thumbprint cookies, Hunk stopped trying to extract the stubborn stripped bolt and gave Lance his full attention.

“Hey, buddy, what’s all this,” he asked, nodding towards the plate while he rubbed a rag between his oil-greased hands. “You didn’t have to go through all the trouble of bringing me cookies, but at the same time, bless you because I love them.”

Lance’s smile jumped to his lips a moment too slow. He lifted a shoulder, pointedly looking down at the plate. “Ah, it’s nothing. Mom made too many anyway.”

“There’s like two dozen,” Hunk pointed out.

“She was stress-baking today, I guess. I dunno. She’s been in a weird mood since--well, all week, really.” 

The same might be said of all of them.

Hunk eased the plate out of Lance’s hands, and popped a cookie in his mouth. The dollap of sugar pressed in the center melted on his tongue. “Mmm, how does she make these taste so good?”

“Family secret,” Lance teased. He cleared away Hunk’s clutter on the workbench and lifted himself up to sit on the table amongst the scatter of tools and rags and discarded soda cans. Proof that the Firebird--not as pretty as it could be, the paint dull and chipped, the sides dented from either accident or poor judgement--was giving Hunk one hell of a time.

It wasn’t even that. As Lance said before, they were all distracted. Life happened a little off kilter around them. This type of thing, replacing car parts, tinkering with it to make it good as new,  _ fixing _ it, well that was something Hunk took a lot of pride in. It was his nervous habit, his way to keep his hands and mind busy as the days bleed into nights and the world struggled on.

Recently, Hunk couldn’t get into it.

“Transmission went out, that right,” Lance asked, nodding towards the car. He sat carefully poised, legs crossed at the ankles, hands braced on his thighs. He looked interested, but Hunk knew that only ran so deep.

Something else was on his mind.

“Yeah. Dad and I replaced it earlier. Just trying to get the rest polished up before we send her back.” Hunk set the cookies down by Lance’s hip, taking one more to chew on. “Wanna help?”

Lance cocked a brow at him, then at the car, confusion coloring his face. “Man, you know I can’t make heads or tails of things like that. I wouldn’t be much help to you.”

Hunk waved him off, turning back to the car, bending forward to study the open hood again. “You can hand me the tools I need,” he supplied cheerfully. “And while you do, you can tell me what’s going on.”

“What do you mean? Nothing’s ‘going on’.” It came out in a huff, nearly running together, and only drove Hunk’s point home.

“I’ve got all night and, like, a near-endless supply of cookies now, so keep that up as long as you need to.” Hunk held out a hand. “Also, pass me a wrench.”

Lance frowned. Said nothing for a beat. Glancing at the mess around him, Lance combed through it until he found what Hunk requested, setting it in his waiting palm. “Here.”

“Perfect, thank you.”

“Glad to be of service.”

That became the system they adopted. Hunk asked for a tool or a bottle of this or a can of that and Lance would find it and pass it over. It became quiet work, only the small, tin-y music playing off Lance’s phone supplying conversation. At least when Hunk requested a certain song, Lance gave that to him too.

He was never one to press, but as the sun started to sink, taking the heat with it, the cicada cries, the hush of Indigo Pull traffic, Hunk started feeling a little antsy with Lance’s silence. It was unnatural for him to keep to himself for so long. Usually, he burst with excitement or nerves and talked through whatever bogged him down. Nothing bothered him like this.

Finally, Hunk set down his tools and leaned back, his spine giving off an impressive series of  _ pops  _ and  _ cracks _ . He huffed, spun around, and shot Lance a thumbs-up. “I'm calling quits on this tonight. Want to come inside?”

Lance held one of his mom’s cookies, spinning it carefully between his fingers. His brow scrunched up, and then he popped the cookie into his mouth, chewing on that as much as his own thoughts. 

“Nah. But. . .you want to go on a walk with me instead?” Lance glanced at him when he said it, and his ankles crossing and uncrossing.

Hunk would take that over his bouncing knees any day.

“Sure thing, bud. Care if I change real quick? I'm greased to the throat.” He pointed at the black oil stains ruining his yellow shirt, wincing playfully like it hurt his feelings more than it really did. 

Lance smiled and ate another cookie. “I guess I can do that much,” he said, in a light, teasing way. A little more back to himself.

Hunk grinned. “Two tics.”

He already knew where Lance wanted to go--up the hill again, by Lion Castle, past the cemetery, maybe as far as the Holt estate. Their feet knew this path so well they could travel it in the dark or backwards or even backwards in the dark. The road was almost  _ their _ road, their own path, similar to the ones cattle beat in the earth, or deer through the forest. A trail of their own, made their own, and held by them still.

A comfort, a single stroke of  _ sameness _ in a time when everything felt shaken up.

They walked up the hill. Lance had shoved his hands into pockets, and his strides were determined. His focus forward. Hunk watched him out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you hoping to see Keith out,” he asked. They stopped under a streetlight, amber and dim, the same color as the sun being swallowed by the mountains. Twin stars in the oncoming dark.

Lance didn’t try to hide it. A small smile ghosted over his lips. “Ah, well, maybe,” he admitted. “You cool with that? You don’t really have to come along.”

“Sure I do. This is the most you talked to me all night. Keep going.”

Lance huffed out a laugh. “Alright, alright. You and Pidge are gremlins, you know that?”

“ _ Pidge _ is. We all know I'm more of the cleric in the group.” Hunk waved him off.

Lance rolled his eyes. But it worked. This walk, or maybe this night, or maybe the secret lay in the homemade  _ dulce de leche  _ cookies he brought from home--whatever it was, it got Lance talking.

The words were vague at first, only partially understood. Under the watchful eyes of the appearing stars Lance admitted, “I thought I got over it, you know?”

Hunk cast him a look. Streetlights drew the shadows of Lance’s face long, turned that small smile into a new, deep frown. “Over what?”

Lance gestured, his hands fluttering like moth wings around him. “Feeling. . .things. I guess. Does that make sense?”

“Pretend it doesn’t. Talk it out. I think that’ll be better, really. For the both of us.”

The road went onward; and so did Lance. With each step closer to Lion Castle, he became a little more sure of himself, a little more used to the idea of spilling out everything he’d trained himself to keep inside.

He talked about the two times in the graveyard, Keith’s actions, his sadness deep enough Lance swore he felt it too. He confessed the moment in the Holt’s kitchen, how it warmed him to hear Keith laugh because of something he had said or done. And he mentioned when he started to realize what all of this meant. Why it all made him feel so warm.

“I'm sorry I bailed on you guys earlier. I needed a moment.”

_ Or several _ , Hunk thought.

Hunk had plenty of those to give, and the patience to last a hundred nights like this. He reached over and squeezed Lance’s shoulder. “You’re fine. So, Keith, huh? I want to say I didn’t see that one coming but, you know, this isn’t the first time you've been hung up on him.”

Lance’s shoulders sagged. He groaned into his open palms, hiding his face. “God, I must be stupid, right? Maybe it’s nothing, but it  _ feels _ the same as before. You know, when we were in track together.” He dropped his hands, and his feet turned, his body craning towards Hunk’s.

Hunk caught him in his arm, a quick, offered hug, easy as that. Absentmindedly, he patted his back. “Okay, for one, you aren’t stupid. You've got a  _ crush _ .”

Lance visibly winced. “Gross, don’t call it that. Plus, it doesn’t even matter, right? This--whole thing. Or it shouldn’t.” His voice dropped off. His early cheer came to a full stop. “I'm probably just making something out of nothing anyway,” he finished softly, a cheek pressed to Hunk’s shoulder, his own arms crossed and squeezing himself tight.

“That’s not true,” Hunk argued. He shook him and pushed him back, forcing Lance to stand straight. He thought it might snap him from his downward spiral, but, really, he couldn’t control the weather anymore than he could Lance’s swinging confidence. “It could be a whole lot of something. You don’t know. You should talk to Keith.”

Lance turned his chin pointedly away, squinting off in the gloom. 

That night, for the first time in decades and for the very first time in their lives, Lion Castle had come alive.

Stepping closer, the two of them were welcomed in warm light spilling off the porch, streaming in through the windows, pooling liquid gold at their feet. Backlit, the hedges seemed impossibly giant, too tall to scale with a single leap like Lance had done days before. They were thorn and tooth and shadow. And they looked ready to bite again.

Soft melodies crooned from the open door--jingling piano keys, a half-realized song sung in the quiet, more hum-and-whistle than words. A lullaby, maybe. Beautiful, absolutely.

Indigo Pull always had its ghost stories. There were people who claimed the indigo trade killed its fair share of slave labor and greedy men, and their bones, their spirits, salted the soil to this day. It’s why Lion Castle stayed abandoned. It’s why the land grew so wild, crept in every seam, every window, peeling away the house layer by layer by layer. A kind of retrubution. Baptism by kudzu.

Hunk grew up hearing these same stories. They were his history as much as Lance’s, this town as much as his. Lion Castle always boosted ghosts, always stood askance on uneven ground, tittering towards ruin. Always ruin. Another grave plot in the cemetery.

The plantation house still needed a new coat of paint. It begged for a new roof, a new upstairs window, a few nails to pin the gutters down. The statues in the lawn needed cleaned or painted; the weeds pulled.

But to see it like this, alight, open. . .

Hunk heard Lance move, sneakers scuffing on the concrete, and turned, just in time, to watch his tears fall.

“Lance? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

Lance rubbed the backs of his knuckles across his eyes. His brows sunk low and, when he pulled his hand away, he tilted his head quizzically at the smear of wetness left. “I don’t--"

His voice broke.

Lion Castle’s gate stood ajar, the metal lion lost somewhere in the ivy. Evening brought out the terror of its metal fangs, sure, but how could it seem foreboding now, pushed wide to allow the night in. To allow  _ visitors _ in. People, living and curious, who wanted to see what lie beyond the weed-choked walkway and its broken stone angels.

It was something more than that, Hunk understood as much as he understood the silhouettes flitting inside the house were of Allura’s and her uncle, not the shapes of ghouls or demons or ghosts. Nothing scary. Nothing the mythos of Indigo Pull claimed lived inside.

_ Something out of nothing. _

Hunk stepped towards Lance and pulled him in once again, securing Lance in the tight circle of his arms. Lance came willingly, and however much he tried, or scrubbed at the tears rolling down his cheeks, his crying didn’t soften. In time, it would wet Hunk’s clean shirt through, and that was okay just like it was okay realizing not all stories were meant to be true--even in spending a lifetime believing that they were.

Inside Lion Castle, Allura sang her soft songs.

Outside, Hunk and Lance listened until the porch light turned off.

The final day of August came to a close.

And as it  _ must _ , as seasons and weather and people always do, everything was beginning to change.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Across the hill, alone, outside after what felt like a solid week shut-in, Keith perched on the low stone wall encircling the graveyard. He sat and waited, waited and sat, the graves at his back, the road stretched out in the dark in front of him.

He had no reason to be here. 

His heart had spent enough time grieving for now--for his father, for his absent mother, for Shiro’s own heartache. Keith came here to see if something might happen. Something new, something he wasn’t sure why he wanted but wanted all the same.

Every now and then, he rubbed a hand across his jaw, thinking.

Every now and then, the very faintest murmurs of someone singing caught the wind just right. And when it did, Keith closed his eyes and listened.

The tune was at once familiar and unknown, like he once heard it before but sung in a different voice, a different pitch or tempo. 

_ My mom _ , he thought the second time it happened, when his eyes had fallen shut and he lost himself to it.  _ My mom used to sing this to me. _

Lance and Hunk didn’t venture past Lion Castle that night.

If they would have kept to the road, followed it all the way down to Pidge’s as they’d planned, they’d have crossed Keith sitting there like that: His head tilted back towards the moonless sky, hands clenched tight, tears burning the backs of his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I'm trash and fell behind because of NaNo, I'm going to do my best to post the next chapter up tomorrow or Sunday to do a speedy catch-up. Sorry about the wait!


	6. Chapter 6

The very next morning, somewhere between the soft rooster cries and the gentle baying of distant dogs, a single, drawn scream shocked the McClain family awake.

Jerked from their dreaming, their easy sleeping, Luis especially fumbled to make sense of the noise. The sound stabbed through the walls, rattled  _ inside  _ of them. It echoed down the night-dark hallways, bled in through the cracks under the doors.

He leaped to his feet, covers tossed, his wife sitting balanced on her hands. Her eyes gleamed in the dark.

“What _is_ _that_,” she whispered, horror caught in her throat.

Luis knew the by the time he got to the door. When he jerked it open, the scream faded; the silence it left felt even louder.

He answered her question in the hall, his feet thunder joining the opening doors and murmurs of his family, called to action at that same, split second.

To her, to the startled faces of his son and daughter, his mother, his weather-worn  _ papá _ , he said what they’d all been thinking:

“ _ Lance _ .”

They found him curled in bed as they did nearly every morning, his body half-in and -out of sheets. A thick blue comforter lay on the floor, kicked off, thrown off, discarded. And he, in the middle of it all, curled in on himself, hands squeezed to his chest. A twisted knot of pain.

Lance saw them when they entered, all of them, every member of his family spilling into his room. His mother came first, her worry heavy in the air, deep enough to touch and mold. 

“What’s wrong,” she said first in English, then Spanish when Lance only grunted at her and tightened the grip on his hands.

His shoulders shook.

It took him several seconds to breathe and regain himself. Through grit teeth, Lance confessed, “My hands are broken,” with absolute certainty.

Coaxing them away from his chest took their mother a handful of long, painstaking moments. Not because Lance didn’t want her to see, but because it hurt him to move them. He bit back those noises best he could, but one or two slipped out, startled, over his quivering lips. His eyes banked back tears.

Easing herself on the mattress and helping Lance sit up right, their  _ mamá _ searched Lance’s hands for injury. His fingers down the wrists, the joints of his knuckles--they were unmarred. Fine, tan skin unbroken. The only odd thing about them were his fingers, bent a little skewed and violently shaking. The pain, too, but they could only hear that, not see.

Lance looked down at them too, under the light of the rising sun and the overhead light someone thought to turn on. His brow knit in confusion; his mouth mimed a silent  _ what? _

Their  _ papá _ came up next, turned them in his own hands, thumbs rubbing against the lines of Lance’s fingerbones and the sharp hills of his knuckles. There, especially, Lance jerked, a foot slamming down against the floor.

“ _ Ow! Stop! _ ”

“Hold still,” their father said, not unkindly, and Lance, groaning, obeyed. He tapped Lance’s knuckles again, barely a touch, and shook his head, frowning, perplexed. “They aren’t broken,  _ mijo _ .”

Lance pulled them back, his arms shaking from that alone. He blinked at his tears again like he was trying to will them away. “I--they  _ hurt _ . A lot. Like--I feel like I slammed them in a car door or something.”

“What happened last night? Did you fall or anything at Hunk’s?” His mother asked this and, again, she took Lance’s hands in her own. She held them and carefully rubbed her palms against his skin. Soothing over searching now, easing any of his pain she could.

“They could be sprained,” Veronica offered, inching closer. She glanced at Lance, then to her mother, expression hard to read. Nervous, maybe, like the others.

Lance shook his head. He sighed and rocked forward, pressing his forehead to his mother’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t think I did anything to hurt them.”

“Could be you slept on them wrong,” Luis tried.

“Yeah,” Rachel agreed, rubbing at her eyes. “You know how sometimes you sleep with your arm hanging over the bed? And when you wake up it’s stiff and sore and hurts to move? Maybe something like that?”

Several sets of eyes watched Lance lift his shoulder. Several sets of ears heard him say, “Maybe.”

Little Slyvio tiptoed over to the bed. He turned his wide eyes down to look at Lance’s hands, and offered up a suggestion they all thought of, “Maybe you just had a bad dream?”

Bad enough to linger. Bad enough Lance couldn’t recall anything but this, just phantom pain and his own terror. But it held credit. Lost limbs still itched or burned or cramped, why not the same for a dream so deeply disturbing Lance brought some of it back?

Lance offered his bravest smile to his nephew. Brave because it tucked away all his own fear, brave because it was meant to keep his family’s worry from growing.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “Just a bad dream. When’d you get so smart?”

Slyvio grinned. “I’ve always been  _ smart _ ,  _ Tío _ .”

He couldn’t argue with that.

With nothing else to go on, one by one, his family left. Luis and his wife first, taking their children with them after they both gave Lance ‘get-well-kisses’ to his hands. Then their  _ papá _ , Rachel, Marco. Their  _ abuela _ watched from the doorway, eyeing Veronica standing stoically to the side, and beckoned her away to help her start breakfast. The anxious air lingered after they left, the impression of Lance’s pained screaming something that would haunt them the rest of the day.

The guilt of it pulled Lance away from the comfort of his mother’s embrace. Slowly, he withdrew his hands.

“Sorry for scaring everyone,” he said. And he looked it too, shoulders slumped, head bowed. Something  _ he  _ would carry, not for the day, but the entire week. 

“Never be,” his mother assured him and pressed a peck on the top of his head for good measure. “Do you feel any better now?”

Lance looked down at his hands for a long moment, until he had the courage to squeeze them. He did, and that time, didn’t wince as badly.

“Yeah. Yeah I do.”

She smiled and stood. 

After she left, Lance sat in his bed for the rest of the morning, studying his hands. They no longer hurt, not really, only ached in the sense that he held onto the memory of the pain that woke him up. It  _ felt _ like his bones had broken. All eight of his knuckle bones ground to dust. Seeing them, flexing them normally, wiggling his fingers, confused him even more. No bruising. No pink flush or broken skin. Just his hands. Just his fingers. Nothing wrong.

Nothing wrong at all.

“What the hell,” he murmured aloud, as if asking his own body why it had done this to him.

Unless the roosters calling up the sun or the crows cawing in the trees tried to tell him something he couldn’t understand, Lance didn’t get an answer.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Lance kept his hands in pockets and what happened that morning to himself.

The entire way up to Pidge’s, Hunk side-eyed him and looked on the verge of asking him what was wrong. Lance appreciated that he didn’t--he wasn’t sure what he would say anyway. The whole morning felt like a distant part of a dream. Not entirely real but not entirely made-up either. A blurred line right in the middle, where he couldn’t discern exactly  _ how _ badly his hands had felt, just that it sank, now, like a vague sense of  _ wrongness  _ against the backdrop. Like the deeply clouded sky held the impression of morning behind its soft lilacs and downy blues but kept the sun hidden from sight.

Every few steps, Lance couldn’t help flexing his fingers. And each time, nothing happened despite his surging anxiety. No pain. Not even a fleeting cramp.

It felt like time moved sluggishly. Each step took three whole minutes to complete, each breath a full sixty-second cycle. Hunk’s small attempts at conversation helped when they came, but his friend mostly kept to the same nervous air. It took them exactly twenty minutes to reach Pidge’s house, as it always did, only it passed like days around them, lost and spent to this single thing.

Oddly enough, Pidge wasn’t outside like normal. His spot by the mailbox stood starkly empty, filled only by a settling fog rolling off from the river. Lance spared Hunk a glance and saw him lift a hand up to his mouth, worrying down on his nails.

Anxiety literally must be in the air.

Lance gave Hunk the gift of going to the door, while he hung back by the front gate, protected in the threshold of its mossy stone. 

“He probably overslept,” Lance called back as he reached the door, trying not to think about it as he rapped his knuckles against the old wood. “I meant to text him.”

“Same. Slipped my mind.” Hunk cast an unhappy glance at the thickening cloud-cover, his panic growing just the same. “Man, I  _ hate _ walking to school when it’s like this.”

Lance, too, but he didn’t say so. The fog came in dense waves, the air almost too damp to breathe. It settled over the lawn, hazing out the rest of the road and what could possibly lay beyond. All the same things they were used too--the rest of the hill, the three-way turn in the road, and a little further, the school building--and yet, the sense of unknowing pricked up the back of Lance’s neck. They could hear the noise of cars, their low engines humming, tires hissing across the pavement, but they were an entire town away, cloaked by the mist and distance. 

This tiny cut of world seemed even smaller waiting on the Holt’s doorstep.

Lance knocked again.

This time he heard footsteps, rummaging, and the door swung inward.

Honestly, he expected Pidge, hair unkempt, clothes a crumpled mess thrown on in a hurry. Not a pair of sleepless eyes or a very polite, very tired smile. Not Shiro. 

“Hello, Lance,” he said, and then after, catching sight of Hunk in the yard. “Hello to you too, Hunk. Here for Pidge?”

Despite this casual exhance, Shiro’s body language read a little off. His stance a little stooped, a little caved in under the weight of the upcoming service. Friday, two days away, sank like a stone in their bellies, heavy and hard to ignore. Lance, with his large, extended family, was no stranger to funerals, but this felt different. No one he knew had ever been murdered before.

Still, it was nice to see Shiro out, and his attention to his appearance, though unneeded, helped the dread of the upcoming weekend feel a little further off.

Lance offered a smile in return. “Yeah, we are,” he said, to answer his question, then after, before Shiro turned away and left, “You doing okay?”

Shiro’s resolve or military training shone through--he didn’t flinch away or otherwise give any indication the question hurt to hear. Though it must have, Lance reasoned. Anything dealing with that certain subject had to.

“As fine as I can be,” he said, and the gentle sway of his voice made Lance believe it. He reached over across the small distance and patted Lance’s shoulder. “Thank you for asking. I promise I'm doing my best.” This, a little easier to say, a little rehearsed maybe, spoken to the Holt’s or to Keith day-by-day. “Wait here, I'll go get Pidge.”

He left, leaving the door open. In his absence, the space seemed too large to fill, a void with the faintest outline of what once stood there. A sadness so heavy it seemed to fall in any place that could hold it.

Lance rubbed at his eyes again. When he dropped his hands, someone new stood in the doorway, dressed similarly to Shiro in a black turtleneck and matching joggers. Lance glanced up, right into Keith’s eyes.

The conversation from last night, while he and Hunk stood outside of Lion Castle, came flooding back, and the confession of it heated his ears. 

He took a startled step away, right as Keith said, “Hey,” soft as the filtered sunlight through the clouds.

Lance’s heart shot right up to his throat.  _ A crush _ , Hunk had said. Well, Lance really felt it now, in his hammering heartbeat and his sudden quaking hands.

“H-h-hey,” he stammered. Coughed. Tried again. This was just Keith--just Keith looking  _ really good _ in a size-too-large shirt and pants. “What’s up, man?”

Keith seemed to take him in, one fell swoop of a gaze that traveled from his feet back to his face. Lance tucked that away to think about later, what it meant and why warmth flushed through his stomach.

“Nothing,” Keith told him, and Lance watched him lift a hand, a small wave in Hunk’s direction. “I just. . .I was hanging out with Shiro.”

Made sense. As did the clothes; they must be Shiro’s too. The joggers were loose on his hips, but not unsightly so--they clung with enough grip that they didn’t slip when he moved back. 

Lance flushed because he had been looking, and then again when Pidge bounced through the space Keith offered.

“Hey, sorry, I overslept,” Pidge said in a rush, stepping out on the doorstep with Lance, backpack bulging and swinging heavily. 

“So, what I’m hearing is you stayed up marathoning alien conspiracy documentaries again,” Lance supplied, brows raised.

Pidge grinned sheepishly. “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. Anyway. Thanks for waiting up.”

Lance brushed him aside. “What? Like we’d leave without you.” 

Keith watched them from the doorway, arms crossed. The long sleeves of his shirt hung almost past his fingers, the extra fabric wadded in the palms of his hands. He had his head cocked, his eyes flitting around the fog-choked yard.

“Hey, uhm--" His voice caught in the gloom, stalling Lance’s feet. He looked back and saw Keith heading after them, pulling the door shut. “. . .can I walk with you guys?’

Pidge barely masked his surprise. The grin he turned towards Lance, all teasing and knowing, was something Lance would have to take up with him later. “Sure. The more the merrier.”

Lance was going to kick him.

Pidge went on ahead, meeting Hunk under the stone arch, chattering on about aliens, to which Hunk paled and waved his hands, saying something like, “Man, not  _ now _ , have you never seen  _ The Mist _ ?”

Keith hung back with Lance. His presence beside him made him a little antsy, his own nerves flaring. They went to join the others, Pidge and Hunk caught up in their conversation, Lance and Keith in a steady, tense silence.

It felt like they both wanted to say something but neither knew how to go about it. Lance thought of Lion Castle, its lights and music, and almost brought it up, had the words ready, when something moved through fog right at him.

He came to a full stop. Keith ran into him, and his hands flew out, latching on his shoulder for the briefest of seconds before falling away.

“What are you--?” Keith didn't finish.

The shadow moved quick. Lance watched it, stomach in knots, though, rationally, it could only be one thing. Slowly, it took shape. A head of white hair, dark skin, boots so loved their leather had turned suede-soft.

Allura. She drew near, the fog parting around her the same dreamy color as her hair. Her eyes, even in this soft lighting, stood out, bright as hard candies. 

She slowed to a stop when she saw them, her mouth a smile wide enough to alight her face, dimples drawn in her cheeks. “Oh! Why, hello there,” she greeted them all, her accent new and different, upper class and well-paid for. “Rather offsetting day, isn’t it?”

Hunk lifted a hand.  _ Finally _ , that look said,  _ someone gets it _ . “Absolutely, yes.”

Allura laughed good-naturedly. “I don't think we’ve all properly met, though I recognize you two.” She pointed between Lance and Hunk, laying her hand flat, an offered shake to those who would take it.

Hunk was the champion who did. “I'm Hunk.”

Pidge shifted his bag on his shoulders, a little wary. “Pidge,” he said and plucked at the front of his shirt, slouching a bit. At least today he exchanged the over-big hoodie for a baggy shirt. A small victory.

Lance introduced himself next; Keith didn’t at all, and just stared at Allura like she was some creature out of the mists. A ghost come alive. And she certainly looked it, her clothes today vintage, an off-cream, lace-throated shirt with sleeves that bellowed out from her wrists. Her slacks, an earthy brown. Boots, the velvet color of dust or old age. Around her neck hung a simple golden chain that spoke of status as much as taste, weighed down by a small, turquoise jewel.

She, at that moment, save the small bits of blue she wore, looked like a sepia photograph. 

Keith, in his baggy clothes, borrowed not owned, stood her exact opposite--a grayscale picture of poverty. 

To Lance, he said, “I didn’t tell Shiro.”

Lance looked back at him, his elation fading. “What?”

His confusion only rattled Keith further. He jerked a thumb back at the house. “Shiro. I didn’t say I was leaving,” he explained. Something sounded off. His voice, tight, edged in a way Lance didn’t quite grasp.

“Oh. Well. I can wait, if you need to--"

Keith shook his head. “It’s fine. Maybe another time,” he said, glancing over at Allura before he spun on his heel and headed back towards the house.

Lance stood in the drifting mists, his excitement fizzled out, like a wish on a birthday candle or the memory of fireworks. Allura tilted her head, eyes squinted just a touch, studying Keith's fleeting back.

She said, “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

And Lance assured her, “You didn’t.”

She spared one last look towards the estate house looming almost out of sight in the fog. Like everything else, familiar or new, it dressed it up in the color scheme of dread and haunt, a horror house much a cousin to Lion Castle before Allura put the heart back inside. Another home for ghosts and stories and Lance’s blind faith.

Keith, like another shadow drifting between windows.

Biting his lip, adjusting his backpack, he told Allura he’d catch up with them and left her standing there in the road, blinking after him. She had no reason to stay, no loyalty or kith, but her kindness took her down the lane to Pidge and Hunk, and Lance heard her soft voice lift in explanation.

Lance went back towards the Holt’s gloomy estate, long legs catching up with Keith in a few, quick strides. Just like in track. The  déjà vu dizzied him.

“Hey! Keith, wait up!”

Keith’s entire back tensed. He turned, surprised, brows arched in suspicion. “Yeah?”

Lance stopped right in front of him, almost back in the shadow of the door again. Lance folded a hand around his bag strap.

“Are you busy tonight,” he asked, before nerves or better judgement could hook their claws into his resolve. “This afternoon, whichever.”

Keith stared at him. He must've realized and folded his arms, shrugging a shoulder. “Why?”

“Meet me by the river if you can,” Lance explained and suddenly felt the urge to smile. “By the bridge. Like, 6 or so?”

Keith rubbed at his arms. He looked from Lance to the sky, the clouds shifting and moving and starting to break apart. He inched back towards the door.

“Okay,” he said, just as he slipped inside the house.

The fog thinned. The clouds shattered and dispersed. Any thoughts of rain vanished as the sun came out from hiding and painted the world below in gold. It all happened slowly, turn by turn in the roads, step by step of their sneakers and boots. But it happened all the same, and by the time the four of them reached school, the first day of September warmed them through.

It was a small thing, really, that ‘okay’. Just a word, softly spoken, but to Lance it felt like a won medal or ribbon, something he wore proudly, unabashed, for the rest of the day.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Dusk found Lance down at the riverside, and it fell on him in muted pinks and violets; the river, a mirror, so the world, at that very moment, had two sunsets, not one. It was more than that--there was promise in the air, and it scented it like fresh rain and damp soil. Growing, green smells that Lance breathed in deep and held.

For the moment, he stood alone and waiting. He wore his school bag, and inside it, tucked carefully in the laptop pouch, was Keith’s gift. He went as far as to wrap it. No reason, though now, when he thought of the time he spent making it perfect as he could, it seemed a little much. But who didn’t love opening gifts? Half the fun of getting a present was tearing into it, solving the mystery of what waited beneath a few thin layers of colored paper.

Lance hoped it read like that. 

On-and-off rains left the river swollen. The waters were muddied, more cloudy than normal, and pushed past the natural pebbled bank around it. It rushed and it roared, more alive than the bubbling riverbed of his childhood. The crayfish would still be there, tucked under their rocks, but to catch them now would be impossible with the quick current and impaired visibility. The thought came to him as it always did while he walked along the bank: He remembered how full his days felt spent down at this very place. If he had the nerve, if the water had been clearer, he might’ve rolled up his jeans and waded into the shallows to turn over stones while he waited on Keith.

Waiting and Lance never got along well. He wanted time to advance forward, not hiccup and stick to one moment. Like now, when the last sunlight splashed across the water, fighting with the bluish cast of nearby street lamps. Like at school, where the day dragged its feet so slowly it might as well have been chained still.

Nothing even happened, which made it all the worse. The only odd thing came during lunch, when Allura appeared at their lunch table and asked to sit with them. Hunk said “Sure?” like a question and she smiled and accepted it as well any invitation.

Lance remembered her leaning into the small circle of the three of them, Pidge inching back for every one Allura came forward.

She told them, in an apologetic hush, “I’m sorry. I’m trying to get rid of that James fellow. He keeps trying to sit with me, and I can only say ‘no’ so many ways.”

“You could punch him in the face,” Pidge had said, with every bit of malice he could.

Allura blinked her candy eyes. “Would that work,” she asked the table at large. It was the first non-polite, most unexpected thing they’d ever heard her say.

It made Lance laugh. Even Hunk chuckled. Pidge looked pleased as punch.

Maybe they had this girl--this high-class, highflautin girl--all wrong.

Not just her. But Lion Castle too. Their home, Indigo Pull, and its history. Standing by the riverside, toes inches from the water, Lance understood that he might not understand anything at all.

The sunset bled over the water, and Lance, alone, took everything in.

He thought that Keith wasn’t going to show after all.  _ Something out of nothing _ , right? He breathed in the wet world around him, breathed it out, and turned. 

Lance had chosen a spot right by the bridge to wait, so he wouldn’t miss Keith coming, if he did or would still. All he saw: Water rushing under old stone arches, the graffiti of moss clinging stubbornly along the places closest to the river face, and a road following the curve down its middle, smooth from age. A beautiful, lonely place, crowded only by the noises of evening. The frog croaks, the sing-song locusts, screaming cicadas. They were Lance’s company.

The sun kept falling down; the river drank it dry.

Leaning back against a street lamp, Lance tilted his head up to watch the sky fill with stars.

And just as he thought he shouldn’t wait any longer, he heard new noises slide through the evening. The gentle crunch of footfalls. The soft puff of breathing. And, finally, a voice.

“I thought I missed you.” Lance heard Keith before he saw him. He came off the bridge, stepping around the place Lance stood, close to the bridge, yes, but further down by the water.

No wonder he hadn’t seen him coming. The angle was all wrong. When he looked up, all Lance could see were the high walls of the bridge. Keith was tall--a few inches more than him--but the wall rose higher than that, and in the deepening night, Keith’s outfit of black-on-black blended right in.

Relief filled him to the brim, a cup so close to overflowing that he laughed from it.

“I thought you stood me up, mullet,” he said, the old, playful insult rolling right off his tongue. A practiced punch.

Saying it brought back memories. The track field. Locker rooms. The steam of communal showers. 

_ Oh _ .

Things were piecing together, a little bit at a time, things Lance once tried really hard to ignore.

The night made it easy to be bold, he reasoned. That had to be it.

Keith’s smile hitched up a single side of his mouth. “Seriously?”

“What? It’s your hair, not mine,” Lance said, lifting up his shoulders in an animated shrug. 

“That’s not what I meant.” A scoff. Keith crossed his arms.

“Yeah, yeah. Why’d you come the opposite way,” he asked, changing the subject, pointing up towards the bridge again. Sunset had lost itself to nightfall entirely; artificial light spilled down around them, from streetlights on the path and on the bridge itself, following the structural design in numerous, metal arches. Keith followed where he looked, eyes slipping over to the bridge as well.

“Honestly? I thought you meant that side,” Keith admitted.

Lance looked at him. “Why would I mean that? This side is closest to town.”

The bridge held one of the roads that lead out of Indigo Pull. There were three proper roads and small spiderweb backroads that branched out from town. The road over the river led to the nearest big city, Verdent Run--and now, with the sun below the horizon line, the faintest cast of city lights blurred the edge of the night sky. Another road, towards the north, took you up the mountains. And east, a straight, easy road most frequented that took you through more of the same woodsy terrain. Out of them all, the bridge was less traveled, for whatever reason. Lance chalked it up to a natural anxiety of driving across a two-lane road arched high over a river, but having grown up walking and riding across it, the bridge and the river racing beneath it didn’t bother him.

Keith shrugged again, as if that was enough of an explanation.

Lance heaved out a dramatic sigh. “Fine, okay. I guess the details don’t matter.”

This seemed to amuse Keith, if only faintly. He said, “So, why did you want to meet up anyway?”

Here was the million dollar question.

The couple hours Lance spent waiting--and yes, he arrived early, right after school, and crept around the riverside in case Keith showed up at a moment’s notice--didn’t prepare him to answer this outright. Did he have his reasons? Yes, and it was more than the gift in his bag. But to confess them out loud felt a little weird and something Lance absolutely, in no way, was ready for.

So Lance asked him, “Do you want to skip stones?”

One of his favorite past-times growing up was just that simple. He and Marco in particular had an ongoing competition to see who could toss one the furthest, though it was a family hobby all the siblings enjoyed together. Veronica always found the best stones. And Rachel, despite not being as much a fan of the river as Lance, always packed them up the nicest picnics when they decided to spend the day out. In much the way Lance recalled his birthday all those years ago, he recalled these memories and felt the strong pull to be by this river. It’s pebbled banks were almost his own, the water as familiar to him as the barnyards back at his house. 

Another place Lance fell in love with over time.

Keith’s blank stare told Lance all he needed. Lance dropped his bag gently to the grass, and placed his arms akimbo, leaning towards Keith with a grin on his mouth.

“What! Don’t tell me you’ve never skipped stones before?”

“I. . .never got around to it, no,” Keith admitted.

“Well, come on then, I guess it’s now my personal duty to show you how to do it.” Another, heaving sigh. Another small, almost unheard laugh. “Come on.”

Lance led Keith closer to the water, where some rocks were in reach of their hands. Using the lights glinting off the surface, and with his own faith in knowing this river, Lance plunged his hands in, fingers tickling over mud and stone. When he thought one might do, he pulled it from the water, turning it in his fingers. Keith watched this all in silence, brow knit in quiet concentration. 

“Always find ones that are flat on one side,” Lance explained, glancing over at Keith. He held the rock out so he could see, and Keith leaned forward in their already close space, almost near enough their shoulders might, in some other life, press together. “If it’s both sides, that’s better. V’s the best at finding those. She’s, like, a wizard.”

“V?”

“Veronica,” Lance explained and passed Keith the small stone he’d been holding. Keith took it and looked at it under the light, his thumbs rubbing over the one smooth side. “My sister. Looks just like me. Wears glasses, can come off like an insufferable know-it-all.”

Said with absolute fondness.

“Oh. I think I’ve only met your mom once. Wait. No. They always came to the relays, didn’t they?”

Every one of them, actually. The McClain’s supported any of their children’s hobbies or sports teams. They would group in the bleachers for Luis’ football games and Lance’s track races--when he still did them--and were always the ones to yell the loudest, the backs of five or seven different voices carrying out over the fields. Lance loved to hear them or see them and never once felt embarrassed that his entire family had come out to watch him run. He knew of some people who did. And he knew of some people who never had anyone there to watch.

Lance smiled fondly. “Yeah. Big group of hollering Cubans in the stands.”

“The loud ones.” Keith said it as a fact, not meanly or in a judgmental way. Just ‘they were loud’ and they were, just as Lance was loud and full of that same level of excitement and life when it came to pretty much anything. 

“Glad they left an impression.” Lance dunked his hands in the river again, searching for a few more stones. “You know, they always told me they thought you’d get scholarships for how well you did. Like, I was okay, but how you ran. . .man, it was insane.”

It was why Lance tried so hard to beat him. To try and obtain that same level of skill. But there wasn’t any way around it: Everyone had their own talents, and Keith ran like it was what his body was made to do. Run and win. Even now, a year after he’d dropped out, Keith still had the body for it, the strong legs, the trim frame. Lance was built more for water, with his long limbs and torso. Once Keith left and track no longer interested him--another thing he was starting to realize--he toyed with the idea of joining swim team. He didn’t. 

It didn’t really matter.

Keith turned the rock over in his fingers. He didn’t say anything to that, and Lance didn’t really expect him to. For a little while, he fished stones from the water, until he gathered a small pile of ones that would do.

“Alright,” he said when he was done, rubbing his hands dry on his pants. He selected a stone, cocked his hand back, and threw it.

It skipped over the water--one, two, three, four times--before dropping from sight.

“I’m a little rusty,” Lance laughed, jerking his thumb. “Okay, your turn.”

Keith’s mouth went sideways. “Alright,” he said and mimicked the way Lance threw his a few times, getting a feel for it, then snapped the stone out. 

It hit the water once and sank right in.

It was funny in the moment, the absolute shock on Keith’s face. The way his body froze, hand still out, shoulders tight from the momentum. Lance tried his best not to laugh.

“Okay, well, that’s the exact way  _ not _ to do it,” he teased instead. He picked up another and, brushing off the heated look Keith shot him, he explained, “Flick your wrist. It’s  _ finesse _ not a throat punch.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Keith crossed his arms. “At all.”

“Does if you know how to do it. Watch.” Lance showed him how to do it again, his wrist flicking like he was trying to explain. This one skipped five times before sinking. Lance pumped his arm. “Alright! See, easy.”

Keith snatched another rock up. He tossed it up and down, squinting out over the water. And, again, he mimed what Lance did, down to the exaggerated way Lance ended his throw--which, honestly, was more of Lance just showing off than necessary to do it right. But Lance didn’t have the heart to tell him that.

At least that time the stone skipped twice. 

Keith tossed his arms up in exasperation. “Punching something would be easier!”

Lance couldn’t help himself. His laughter burst past his lips, startled, loud, and full of mirth. He folded his arms over his stomach, bending double, shoulders shaking.

“You sure about that?” 

“Yeah, I’m sure, I don’t have to  _ finesse _ anything then,” Keith huffed. “And cut it out! It’s not funny!”

His voice--raised, heated too--broke at the end. Lance waved him off.

“Sorry! It’s just rocks, man, not a competition! I don’t care if you can’t do it, but you’re so  _ into it _ .” Lance shot him a smile. Only a few stones remained in their tiny pile between them; he took two and pressed one into Keith’s palm. “Try it again. You’ll get it.”

With a huff, Keith folded his hand around the stone, and in doing so, purposefully dragged his fingertips over Lance’s skin.

It sent a jolt up his arm, and he withdrew his arm, turning suddenly to face the water. His ears, he was sure, were flushed again, and he thanked the moonless evening for hiding them from sight.

Before Lance threw his, Keith tried again. He didn’t mime the way Lance did it--he found his own method. The stone skipped and skipped and skipped and skipped. Ripples folded out, distorting the reflection of the streetlights, the stars, their faces. Lance turned to look at him.

He caught Keith’s smile before he could hide it.

“There you go!” He chanced it--why not?--and reached over, lightly punching Keith in the arm. “Knew you had it in you, mullethead.”

Keith snorted, but that soft smile stayed. “Yeah, yeah. It’s just skipping stones, right?”

Lance grinned. “Exactly.”

They took turns with the stones they had left. The more time Keith practiced it, the better his throws got, until he’d even beaten Marco’s high score. And when they ran out, they both searched for more, their hands skimming blind in the running water. More than once, they touched, fingers fluttering together for a moment, curious and knowing and bold. Maybe on purpose, maybe not. Each time, Lance glanced over at Keith to see, but it was too dark to make out his face, crouched as close as they were to the water.

Regardless, his chest bloomed warmth like roses in a well-tended garden. He held onto that feeling for the rest of the time they were down there, an entire hour or maybe two, he couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered. He might’ve stayed there all night, picking every stone out of the riverbed, if his mother didn’t call him to come home.

Ruefully, he picked up his bag with one hand, the other fumbling to stuff his phone in his jacket pocket. “I didn’t realize it’d gotten so late,” he said. His fingers were pruned from the water; his chest held the lightness of deep laughter. His mouth a little sore from smiling. “Sorry I gotta bounce. We, uh, should do this again sometime.”

Keith, his arms folded again, sleeve-ends damp and dripping, said, “Yeah. I’d like that.”

Another thing to think of. Another rose added to the garden.

“Oh, one more thing before I run.” Keith tilted his head at this; Lance hurriedly pulled the gift out. Here, he felt nervous again, silly all-over. The gift seemed a little out of place in this night of stones and laughter.

He passed it to him anyway. 

“What’s this,” Keith asked as Lance waved his hands, talking over him, “Hey, the point is to open it. But wait until you get home, okay?”

Said easily, without thinking. Later, tucked inside his own room, under sheets and his self-made galaxy, he’d wonder where Keith  _ did _ live, now that his father was gone. He didn’t think about it in the moment, and besides, he meant nothing bad by it, only wanted to make sure he wasn’t around when Keith tore through the paper.

Keith held the small rectangle, turning it this way and that, like he could see right through it. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Lance agreed. He walked up to the road. Keith stayed by the riverside, watching him go. “Later!”

The way home took no time at all. It passed in a blur of trees and stars and thoughts. Lance could still feel the river brushing over his hands, a phantom sensation, much as he could feel Keith’s laughter still in his ears. It made for a sleepless night, but a night he kept with him all the same, precious and close and _ his _ . 

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Lance told him to wait until he was home, which meant that Keith waited precisely until he couldn’t hear Lance on the road anymore. 

He hooked his thumbs in the seams of the gift wrap and peeled it back, popping open the tape. It didn’t go unnoticed how carefully the wrapping had been done, down to the streamline creases and the red colored paper Lance picked. It all looked very deliberate and had probably taken Lance more than a few minutes to do. And for all it was worth, it made Keith smile to himself.

Of all things, a gift, dressed up like it was for a birthday or something.

_ Why’d he go through the trouble _ , he thought, endeared more than he thought reasonable.

At first, he didn’t understand what he was looking at.

The streetlights glared off the front, shining in his eyes.

Then--a moment of confusion, as he stared down at a photograph of a family, caught in the embrace of an oncoming storm. His Pops and Shiro, laughing. His own face, round and pouting, looking back. And his mother, her beauty sharp enough to slice through the glass of the frame.

The same picture from the Holt’s. The one he’d shown Lance; the one Lance pointed at and told him, “ _ Whoa, you look just like her _ .”

Keith nearly dropped it.

On the back, there was a note, written in blue ink and signed with Lance’s flourished signature:

_ It makes sense for you to have it--it’s your family. _

_ Mrs. H agrees. _

_ And before you think it--NO, I ASKED FIRST!! _

_ \-- Lance _

Of anything Keith thought it might be, it wasn’t this, not a moment he barely remembered, caught on film, secured in a costly frame. 

His eyes burned.

He gently folded his fingers around it, squeezing it tight like he was afraid that if he didn’t, he’d lose the picture to the river or the ground or his own imagination. In doing that, it felt more real, solid, in his hands.

Nevermind it made his knuckles hurt again, the skin still tender and bruised from earlier. Like the sudden urge to cry, he ignored that too, tucking away these small hurts in the back of his mind as he picked his way back to the Holt’s in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hope is to post a chapter every Sunday or Monday, depending on my work schedule! Without NaNo to ruin and run all my free time off, I'm going to do my best to keep to that. Anyways, enough pointless garble, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
> 
> Also a shout-out to bobtheacorn who redid my tagging system. God bless you, dude, it looks so much better now.
> 
> Please know she's been here since the start of this, was my first reader, and I do this for her. If you're sneaking on my chapters again, you goose, please know I love you and without your excitement and support, this fic would've died like most of my other works.
> 
> You're the bees whole knees!!


	7. Chapter 7

Friday dawned in two ways: Once, in wisteria blue, heavily clouded with the promise of rain, and second, in the realization that there was no more ignoring Adam Wynn’s death. 

The shock of it pulled Indigo Pull awake, sinking like a new type of fog in those who’d known Adam best. Slowly, those who would attend the service woke and started preparing, eating their small breakfasts or spending too long dressing up in their nice clothes. Hands were unsteady, hearts were hurting, but none more than Shiro, who woke long before anyone else and felt these things worse and deeper.

He stood in his room at the Holt’s, in front of a full-length mirror, wearing only a pair of sweatpants he threw on the night before. A lamp cast faint light from one corner of the room, all dull gold and shadows, and it fell on his shoulders, picking out the bands of thick scars cording along his arm and chest. Ugly things, really, but things he wore proudly for what they meant. Not only to him but to Sam and Matt as well. To Colleen, to Pidge. Each of them carried this similar weight differently. The knot of skin ending where the line of his arm should be--that was his.

And today, his other hand, weighed down by a ring that no longer had its pair, hurt as badly as his missing arm ever did.

Shiro was a man stitched up of missing pieces, and he was acutely aware of each one.

Keith sat on his blanket pile on the floor, legs drawn up, his eyes on Shiro’s back, watching him the way a cat would, if a cat worried. He woke the moment Shiro had, or so Shiro thought, and had been like this ever since, quiet and watchful and trying to find some way to take some of this burden for his own.

Taking a half-step, a small pivot to turn towards the bed, Shiro regarded his brother. “Do you care to help me with something?”

The words broke through the tense silence. Keith lifted himself to his feet immediately, padding over to where Shiro stood. In the mirror, their relation stood out in the same dark of their hair, the similar way they rested their weight on their feet, borrowed stances from their father. 

Similar, too, in the way their eyes crinkled when they tried to hide how badly they were hurting. But since they were family, and since they knew each other better than that, instead of pointing it out, they moved on. Shiro, to the closet, where he drew the door wide, and Keith, stepping in, helping him pull out the pieces of the suit he needed help putting on.

There was irony in wearing this today. 

Irony, and a sense of  _ rightness _ . 

The process didn’t take too long with Keith there to help button the vest and jacket. He was clumsier knotting the tie, which was fine and expected. Shiro felt Keith’s hands shaking as he looped the silk incorrectly, the fabric slipping and sliding.

“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” he assured, voice low in the quiet of the room.

Keith shook his head, tried again. And again. His frustration grew to the point where he ripped it off entirely and almost threw it to the floor.

“No, it  _ has _ to,” Keith insisted. The words were raw, graveled, absolute.

Shiro pressed his hand to his shoulder, squeezing gently. “No, it doesn’t. It’s just a tie, Keith.”

“But it’s--” He bit it back. His eyes flitted over to the photograph on the nightstand, the one Keith had put up himself a few nights ago.

Shiro knew that picture better than he could remember what having two hands was like. The smiles on his and Adam’s faces. The weight of Adam’s arm around his shoulders, the press of his chin at the juncture of his throat. The way his entire back borrowed the warmth from his chest, the sunlight golden heat crowing their heads. They showed off their rings, one silver and one gold and both glittering and new. Moments right after Adam asked and Shiro told him  _ yes _ .

To Shiro, this photograph caught the very cusp of his happiness, the peak of how much he loved Adam and why he wanted to wear his engagement ring still, though it had no purpose now.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Shiro said, and as he spoke, reached over to slip the tie from Keith’s hand. He held it to fidget, thumb soothing over the fabric. “But trust me when I say a crooked tie doesn’t hurt anything. You knew Adam. He couldn’t tie one straight either.”

Shiro held the tie back out, continuing, “So it only seems fitting. If he were here, it’d look the same way.”

Keith’s eyes went bright. But he blinked quickly, drawing it back in, and tilted his head so his hair fell over his eyes. 

He took the tie, and he tried again, and this time it turned out better but not entirely perfect which Shiro was grateful for.

The shock of seeing himself fully dressed, jacket buttoned smartly up, the tailorwork where his right arm ended seamless, knocked him a little harder than he thought. It looked as good as the day he bought it, snug and as fine a fit. There was no escaping now that this had been for a wedding, not a funeral, the style just a bit off and a little too formal. But to wear anything else seemed wrong and almost an insult. This was meant for Adam, and one way or another, Shiro would wear it for him one last time.

Shiro smoothed his hand down the front of his chest, erasing any faint or imagined lines. And to Keith, speaking to his reflection in the mirror, he said, “Thank you.”

Keith didn’t react. Just stood there, looking at his own feet, as the seconds ticked closer to daybreak. Shiro watched him, studied the bowed weight of his shoulders and straightened his own. He remembered this same thing over a year ago, another funeral, another moment between brothers, though their roles were reversed. Keith, the one who needed help putting on a suit that he couldn’t stand wearing. Shiro, the one behind, battling to think of ways to make it easier on him, however small it may be.

So when Keith came forward, sudden as a snap, his arms out and curling around his torso, his face pressing between his shoulder blades, Shiro wasn’t surprised. He felt it coming like he felt the upcoming service, a heavy weight in his chest and a tightness burning the back of his throat.

Shiro lowered his arm and folded it over Keith’s shaking ones.

Back then, Shiro had done the same thing, pulled him close as the grief of losing their father finally tore Keith to pieces. He caught Keith’s screaming in the folds of his shirt, his tears in his collar. There was nothing to say that would help him, nothing to do. Only this, only snagging what broken pieces Keith shattered into when he finally ran out of tears and his voice broke and faded mute.

Against his back, barely heard, Keith’s hitched voice rose from between the break in his shoulder blades, “ _ I’m so sorry, Shiro-- _ ”

There was nothing to apologize for. Death took when and how it wanted, and nothing could stop it when it decided its course. Not crying. Not slamming your hands bloody against the wall. Not destroying your childhood bedroom, smashing lamps and picture frames and chairs to match how you felt inside.

No amount of ignoring it changed the fact that in a few hours, Shiro would only see Adam in the urn of cremated ashes, never again smiling or laughing or speaking. Just ashes, just an ornate jar like it made the contents inside any easier to bear.

Shiro let his shoulders collapse. His head dropped forward, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He clutched at Keith’s arm, his fingers twisting in his shirt sleeve. He wouldn’t allow himself to cry or break any further. Losing their father hurt Keith more than he let on, and that pain still lived inside him, pulled him away, made him a ghost of the kid he was before. The fire had died in Keith, and as much as Shiro tried, he could feel the same happening to him. Adam was  _ gone _ . The horror of  _ how _ flooded back, fresh as the day Iverson called him in for questioning.

He nearly sank to the floor.

Only Keith at his back, pressed close, squeezing him like if he didn’t it would cause them both to crumble, kept him on his feet.

He would face this as he had any other bad day in his life. He’d already lost his father, an arm, his career in the military, and now this. In the simplest sense, it was another item on the list, another thing Shiro would survive because he knew nothing else. He pretended he knew love and family and bravery--but when it came down to it, the thing Shiro excelled at best was to  _ keep on going _ .

No matter how bad this hurt now, he would live on.

No matter how ruined he felt, how easily he wanted to give up, he wouldn’t.

Keith took a shuddering breath behind him. That, right there, was reason enough to bury his sorrows as deeply as he could. He could handle this. Anything that came their way from now on, he could handle it.

Slowly, he regained himself.

Slowly, he turned, pulling Keith against him properly, his arm around his back to hug him tight. He allowed one, brief moment of this, let it remedy his aching, then let go, leaning away though Keith’s arms fought to hold on.

“Come on,” he said, carefully composed. 

Keith blinked up at him, eyes red but his face dry; his own control showing through, hard claimed and won. Shiro gave him possibly the only smile he had left, and coaxed Keith back to the closet, where a new suit for him waited, hung along the wall with the rest of the Holt’s overbearing generosity.

He wished they wouldn’t feel the need to, but in that moment, he was glad for it, and pulled the hanger away from the rest. Keith was ready to take it from him when he turned.

“Do you need any help,” Shiro asked, brow knit as he watched Keith stare down at his arms. No doubt remembering the last time he wore a suit, and what it meant then. What it meant now.

Keith grit his teeth. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. 

“Yeah,” he said quietly, glancing up through his bangs, eyes deep and morose as indigo midnight. “I might need help with the tie.”

Shiro laid his hand on his shoulder again, and found new strength for it. He told him, as they stood there together, alone in their private grieving for different and same reasons, “I think I can help with that.”

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  
  


Lance and Hunk arrived first, their families spilling in through the Holt’s main lobby, a mix of Sunday best suits and rainbow dress skirts. They brought with them dishes of food for after the service, plates of cookies and casseroles and cakes from three different generations. The smell of it twisted in the air, mingling with the lily flowers’ perfume, unmistakably heavy and thick in the backs of their throats.

Colleen Holt did no less than her absolute best providing space in her kitchen to accommodate this insurgence of homemade food. She stood black-dressed in her pristine white kitchen, her hands helping place plates and pots in a puzzle along the counters, always leaving more room than thought possible to hold whatever else may come. The promise of good food barely lightened the mood, but it helped, as did the company of all the familiar faces.

Lance felt it, a deep hurt he couldn’t place. Each new face he saw, each frown or set of teary eyes, made his own throat tight. So many people grieving it spilled out in Lance’s open hands for the taking.

Pidge found them almost immediately, and a wash of relief came from seeing him dressed similarly, in a green, patterned button-up and dark dress slacks. He’d paid a small amount of attention to his hair, slicked back the erratic strands with a gel or pomade. Lance teased him about it, ignoring Pidge’s pointed glaring. They both knew it came from a need to clear the heavy air any way possible.

The three of them lingered in the kitchen, watching their families go out into the yard. Only Colleen stayed behind, her attention focused on those who would come and not much on the teens huddled close to the glass doors, speaking amongst themselves.

“I don’t mean anything by it,” Hunk started, glancing from the open doors to the food to the small glance of the lily-choked lobby area. “But I never realized how much your house is like a funeral home. Like, all you need is that mildly disturbing piano music.”

Pidge’s expression turned grim in understanding. “I know, right,” he said in a hush, to keep his mother from overhearing. “Matt even offered to play some hymns, but I talked him out of it.”

“Thank God because it would’ve been  _ too much _ .”

As if it wasn't already. Lance stood detached, leaning more towards the doors than his friends. He took in the scene outside, the dark, damp sky, the surreal green of the lawn. There were plenty of chairs stationed out, a temporary pulpit at the head of them, like a shepherd standing in front of a flock of sheep. A table, beside that, held pictures of Adam--exclusively, no Shiro to be found in any of them--vases of artfully arranged bouquets, and the urn in the middle of it all, unsettling to see.

Lance’s stomach twisted in knots. He didn’t notice until Hunk reached over and took his hands that he was shaking.

“Lance, buddy, you alright?” 

No, but he wouldn’t say that.

All morning, his focus came in broken waves. His thoughts scattered, drifting to now and this moment and back to the riverside with Keith. He chalked up most of his upset stomach to nerves of seeing him again, at a funeral of all places, and it grated against the dregs of good feeling left over from skipping stones. Or it had to be that. Anything else didn’t make sense.

But then he stepped into the Holt’s estate, and instantly choked up. It was in the air, that dampening sorrow, and Lance felt like a sponge taking it all inside. There was  _ too  _ much. Too much. Too much.  _ Too-- _

Hunk shook him lightly by the shoulders. “Lance?”

He came back in a rush, blinking and startled. How he managed to smile was another mystery to figure out later.

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Just scoping the place out,” he said, a weak attempt at humor.

Neither Pidge or Hunk laughed. They both looked unhappy and worried.

“Are you sure?” This from Pidge. He leaned in his space, searching his face. “You’ve barely said anything since you got here.”

“Yeah, fine, I promise.” Even as he said it, he looked away again, back to the open doors, back to the lawn. 

Pidge punched him in the arm.

“ _ Hey! _ ”

“Are. You. Okay?” He drove his fist against him with each word, forcing Lance to pay attention, even if it was in the midst of complaining. “If you need a minute, we can go up to my room?”

“Or we can go find Keith,” Hunk suggested. He stood closer and looked where Lance looked, out into the yard. “That’s who you’re looking for, right?”

Unintentionally, but yes. He was too out of it to argue, too bogged down with the mood of the place. Guilt rolled off of him in waves, for wanting to see Keith, and for acting like he was when he needed to be there for everyone else.

Lance drew in a breath and sighed it out.

“No, it’s fine and anyway--" He caught Pidge’s hand and held it. “Are  _ you _ okay? You knew Adam better than any of us.”

“Yeah, peachy. Well, no, I guess--” Pidge frowned. “I didn’t know him  _ that _ well. He came over sometimes, yeah, but I hate it for Shiro most. That’s--"

The words hung in the air, unspoken but felt:  _ That’s who I'm grieving for _ .

Lance nodded once. Hunk murmured his agreement.

“Let’s go find him,” Lance told the others. 

They walked out as a group, side-by-side-by-side, Lance stuck firmly in the middle of his friends. He knew this was on purpose, and really, it made him feel better that they cared so much.

Like Shiro, Keith stood by the pulpit, a little back from the table and its’ heavy contents. They were close, Keith right behind Shiro’s shoulder, a second shadow. It’s why Lance hadn’t seen him from the kitchen. They were so close they nearly overlapped, less brothers than a single thing.

Seeing him, seeing  _ Shiro _ , tore right through Lance. Before they even made it to them, his blue eyes puddled up with a shared understanding of loss. And when Shiro looked over--when Keith’s eyes found his--Lance’s tears were a landslide down his cheeks, the rain before the rain, foretelling and foretold.

He said, “I'm sorry,” thickly, the words dragging past his lips. 

Pidge’s hazel eyes were wet within seconds, hearing him try. Hunk, solid as ever, held his hand between them, expression as far from his usual smile that it was jarringly wrong. 

Shiro took a step away; when he did, Keith followed, diligent and close, though there was more to it than that. With a steady hand, Shiro gripped Lance’s shoulder. 

“Thank you for coming,” he said, tone even but heartfelt. He looked to each of them--Lance to Pidge to Hunk to Keith. “I know I've said it probably a dozen times already, but I mean it when I say it means a lot. Adam would appreciate it.  _ I appreciate  _ it, everything every one of you have done for me during this.”

Keith stepped nearer, tighter in the loose circle they formed. They were an odd bunch, a haphazard group of teens and young adults, but in that moment, a startling sense of  _ belonging _ replaced some of Lance’s sympathy, helped ease the worst of his tears away. He reached up discreetly as he could to brush the last of them away.

Across from him, Keith watched in silence.

Pidge rubbed at his eyes, glasses skidding up his forehead. “Of course. You know we’ll do anything to help out.” Spoken like a true Holt.

“Yeah, we’re here if you need us, like, literally almost always. We practically live here too,” Hunk said, squeezing Lance’s hand firmly before letting it go.

It may be said it had always been this, this sense of friendship between them. Shiro, no matter in grieving or before, during his visits in from the city, always treated them all as close as family. Keith, too, in his distant way, more so before he lost his father, but even now, in the small ways he tried to make up for his year-long absence.

Lance took the first step forward and slung his arms around Shiro. Then Pidge did the same, then Hunk, and finally, with a gentle tug forward, Keith finished it. A circle now made of arms and squeezing vices, all for Shiro, all for one another.

They were an odd bunch, sure, but they were each others. Now and then and going forward.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The sunflowers arrived ten minutes into Samuel’s readings, and their bright, yellow petals became an instant distraction. Matt brought them to the table silently, placed them amongst daisies and roses and the family lilies, behind the largest picture of Adam. The flowers--over a dozen in total--gave the impression of several small suns beaming out from behind his smiling face.

Pidge whispered in Matt’s ear when he returned to his seat, a question buzzing between the trio of friends when they saw the bouquet: “Who sent  _ that _ ?”

Discreetly, Matt told him all he knew, speaking lightly from the side of his mouth. “No idea. Someone left them on the front porch.”

Not long after, the rain finally came. Sprinkling first, a dusting of drops that caught and danced in the wind, falling on shoulders and the wide brims of hats. On faces, too, masking tears. Pidge removed his glasses for safe keeping. Umbrellas bloomed over seats. Lance was one of the few who didn’t shy away from it. Shiro, Keith--they were two others.

Lance tried his best to focus on what was being said, the kind words, the stories Shiro came up to tell. He heard everything but nothing stuck. It slid in one ear and settled behind his eyes, more tears he blinked back, a deeper ache in his chest. More than once, Hunk reached over and squeezed his arm. More than once, Pidge lightly kicked him from his other side. Their worry made it worse. 

He lasted until a break, a small section of time set aside for soft music and conversation. As the umbrellas shifted, the soft noises of talking rose, Lance got to his feet.

Pidge hooked a hand in his shirt at once, an impulse, a reflex. “Where are you going?”

The rain fell on them all, drenched Lance clean through his shirt. His hair dripped with each small movement.

“I need to step away for a sec,” he told him--and Hunk, listening in. “It’s--I need a breather.”

Hunk’s face twisted with concern. “I can come with you--"

Lance shook his head. He gently loosed Pidge’s fingers away. “Nah. I don’t want to make a scene. I'll be right back anyway.”

The last time he said the same thing, he holed up in the bathroom at school until the final bell rang. He waited for his friends at their usual meeting spot by their lockers, and pretended he simply lost track of time. Silently, he promised himself he wouldn’t do that again, disappear and hide out until the worst was over, because this was important and he needed to be here, outside, in the rain, sitting with everyone else.

He could tell by the looks on their faces they didn’t believe him for a second. But because they knew him and because they loved him, they didn’t argue and watched him leave in their silent, upset ways. Lance owed them for it, and for much, much more.

Alone, he slipped away, around the small communion of funeral guests--his own family, Pidge’s, the Garette’s and others he knew but not by name. Sheriff Iverson was there, seated close to the front, and his presence, his private mourning, struck a chord of how deeply Adam was loved in Indigo Pull as much as how he died tried to disprove it.

The rain kept Lance company up to the moment he stepped inside the Holt’s kitchen, the doors falling shut behind him. 

Oddly quiet, the room seemed six times smaller, the smells from all the gifted food overbearing and rich. It rolled through Lance’s stomach, bile surging up the back of his throat. Without Pidge and Hunk’s careful attention, he finally came undone. His shoulders sank. His legs turned to rubber. And he sank to the polished tile with his heart thundering in his ribs.

He thought, as he sat there, clenching his hands--they shook violently, suddenly, all the way up to his elbows--that he was having a panic attack. That, or he was dying. It all felt the same in the moment, everything wrong and shaking him up inside and out. The noise of his rushing pulse flooded his ears. His teeth started to chatter.

He scooted away from the doors, pushing his back against a cabinet, and beat his fists against his legs. “ _ Stop it _ ,” he told himself, or tried to. He couldn’t find the breath to say it, and it rushed past, a quaking sigh verging on a whine.

Everything fell on him, several weights from several sources.

Lion Castle and its barred doors. Lion Castle and the night it bloomed to life with light and sound. Shiro and his sleepless nights. The  _ hate crimes _ . Adam in the garden, just pictures and memories now, shared amongst friends. Hunk’s nervous tics. Pidge’s mounting anxiety. The gray hoodie that swallowed him alive. Keith’s hands, his arms, his shoulders. His violet eyes looking at him in the graveyard. At the river. Their fingers fluttering together under the rushing water. What did it mean? What did it  _ mean _ ? Did it mean anything at all? Adam in the garden, Shiro in the garden, close enough to touch but never farther apart.  _ Something out of nothing _ .

The rain slashed against the windows. Lance heard it vaguely, registered it way later, what the hissing in his ears had been. 

He didn’t know when it happened, but at some point he ended up laying on the floor. The tile cool on his cheek, and wet. Was he crying again? What did it mean?

Someone came in from the lobby area, a late guest, a mourner who forgot the time the service started. Lance heard his shoes against the floor, saw the faint edge of his slacks. White, like the walls, like the marble counter tops. Pristine, pressed free of wrinkles. His shoes, expensive and fine.

Lance stared in mild confusion. 

Whoever it was didn’t stop, and Lance, laying there on the floor, curled in on himself, felt the immediate urge to  _ not look up _ . Whatever he did, he could not  _ look up _ .

He squeezed his eyes shut, and waited.

The doors never reopened.

He chanced a look, but when he glanced towards the double-doors, there was no one there. 

No one at all.

Thunder knocked across the sky.


	8. Chapter 8

The rest of the day came back in pieces.

The sense of a group of people crowded around him. A glimpse of his  _ mama's  _ worried face. The feeling of someone’s hands, lifting him up. Scents like earth and pine, crisp over the cloying perfume of baked goods, caught in the rough fabric of a shirt.

There came a moment of comfort, a sensation of being laid across a bed or a couch. Murmurs all around, too many voices to understand and hold on to. Too many whispers of his name. Someone shook him at one point, Lance remembered that much, but not who did it or if he said anything to reassure them that he was fine.

Was he?

He jolted awake late in the night. Someone thought to tuck a blanket around him, the soft comforter instantly familiar. The glow-in-the-dark stars brought him back home, placed him in his own bed, in his own room. He stared at them for longer than he needed to feel comforted by them.

There was noise--soft, whispering breaths of other people. As he lay there, hands pressed to the top of his blanket, eyes open in the dark, he knew without looking who’d be there. Pidge. Hunk. He didn’t remember losing consciousness, but it obviously happened, and he’d do the same thing if it’d been either one of them. He’d be stubborn to leave their sides, at best.

Carefully, he sat up, weight balanced on his palms. He looked to his left, his right, and sure enough, there were his friends, piled up together on the floor on a makeshift bed of all his  _ abuela _ ’s handmade quilts.

Lance’s heart filled to the point of bursting, overwhelmingly with love. He started crying again, new, hot tears that rolled down his cheeks without shame. He pressed his hand over his mouth, muffling any noise that thought to slip past. 

He didn’t deserve them. He didn’t deserve their loyalty and their love. Not like this. Not right after he ditched them  _ yet again _ and didn’t come back as he promised. How he freaked himself out to the point of blacking out remained hazy, and when he tried to think back on it, Lance only remembered laying on the floor in the Holt’s kitchen, his body shaking and his teeth clattering together.

And fear. 

He remembered fear.

But not of what. He couldn’t recall what he’d been thinking at the time, only that he had hooked on something and wouldn’t let go. The words  _ what did it mean _ flitted through his head, but they were flimsy, barely understood, and Lance let them go.

Cat-like on gentle feet, Lance left his room. The urge to not wake his friends made him tiptoe across the floor, over them, around them, when, really, he wanted to lay down too. Jostle them awake to have them reassure him that he wasn’t going crazy.

Was he?

It felt like he was.

Light spilled in from the hall from a lamp someone left on. Lance hurried to shut his door behind him. Odd. Usually the house stayed dark. To conserve electricity, which meant to ‘keep the bill down’. He knew the burden of paying bills for a household full to the seams with family, and hurried over to turn it off. 

“You should leave it on,” someone said the moment it dimmed out.

Lance’s shoulders jerked up to his ears. His heart tripped then kicked hard. The shaking squirmed back in his hands.

But he knew that voice, and after the initial shock, he turned to face Veronica standing behind him.

“Damnit, V,” he bit without heat. He pressed a hand down on the table, lifting the other to cover his eyes. “What’re you even  _ doing _ out here?”

“I was coming to get you,” she answered honestly. 

When he looked again, he saw the streetlight from outside cutting strange shapes in the shadows. Bars of light cut across her cheek, caught a shoulder, slashed a ribbing of lines down her stomach. She looked unreal and like a dream and it didn’t put Lance at ease at all.

Lance didn’t say anything. Veronica went on like she expected he wouldn’t:

“We need to have a talk.”

“ _ We _ ,” he asked back, looking past her. The empty hall looked back.

Veronica turned and gestured for him to follow. “ _ Mamá _ ’s waiting on you. And Dad.  _ Abuela _ and Rachel too.”

Lance squinted at her back. He started after her, unsure, listing out the names she said, thinking on them. They didn’t add up. “What about Marco and Luis?”

“This doesn’t concern them.”

He stopped. Veronica beckoned again. Kinder, she explained, “Listen, it’ll all make sense. All of it will, I promise.”

The way she said that-- _ ”All of it will.” _ \--didn’t make him feel any better. It sounded foreboding, almost threatening. What did that mean?  _ All of it _ ? All of  _ what _ ?

What happened at the Holt’s that he wasn’t remembering?

“Can you say that less ominously?” He folded his arms and frowned at her.

V lifted a shoulder. “Probably.”

That helped, the light teasing lit to her voice.

He went after her, curiosity winning. He wanted to know what she was talking about, why she’d been on her way to get him like she knew he was about to wake up. His stomach twisted with nerves despite himself and that put him back in the Holt’s kitchen again. Once, before he left with Pidge and Hunk to the yard, before they spoke to Shiro, to Keith. And after, when he’d been alone, curled in a ball on the same tiled floor. And--something else. There and gone again, a single, still image of a white pant leg. A shoe.

He pushed it aside and hurried on.

Veronica led him to the kitchen. It’s light and life spilled forward, welcome in this moment, the scents of coffee and tea warming him through. His mother rose from her seat, and the look on her face--the mix of worry and love--ate him up inside at the same rate it healed him. His father offered a smile. His  _ abuela _ ’s eyes crinkled at the edges, fans of wrinkles that told the story of her good, long life.

This was his  _ family _ . Why was he so nervous? 

“It’s good to see you up,” his  _ mamá  _ said. She walked over to him and drew him close, hugging him tight against her. “How’re you feeling?”

Caught up in her arms and squeezing her back, Lance felt better than he had in days. He told her as much, his words muffled in the ruffles of her nightshirt collar, “I’m okay.”

When she pulled back, she wore his smile. And she pressed her hands against his shoulders, and told him, “Good.”

Veronica took a seat at the table, between Rachel--who sipped almost lazily at a mug--and their  _ papá _ . Lance plopped down in a chair a little apart from them all, and glanced around at the face of his family. 

“So,” he started, directing the question to his mother. “V said something about a talk? Am I. . .in trouble?” He hesitated to say it. Worry plucked in his stomach again. “Is this about what happened at the Holt’s? Because I don’t know what happened, I just went inside for a second and it was like I couldn’t breathe or think or do anything, I think I was having a--”

Their father caught his hand in his and held it, telling him sternly, cutting across his rambling words, “ _ Lance _ .”

He shut up.

“That’s not it.” Rachel lowered her mug. Out of them all, she seemed almost bored. Or tired. Or, knowing her, probably both. “Well, no. I guess it kind of is.” She glanced towards their mother. “Right?”

Their mother nodded once. She folded her hands on the tabletop, her expression carefully constructed. “Yes.” 

Lance glanced between them all. “Okay. Can we skip the whole half-said stuff because you guys are freaking me out.”

Rachel laughed. “Told you he’d want to jump right in.”

“Never one for nuances,” Veronica agreed, leaning back in her seat. “I guess it makes it easier.”

Lance scowled at them. “Not funny, guys.”

Their father cleared his throat. All the attention in the room flooded to him, and Lance’s sisters fell quiet, Rachel especially mollified. She set her mug on the table and folded her arms.

“Alright, son, this is going to sound a little. . .strange, for lack of a better term. But first, can you tell us all you know about what happened yesterday?” 

Lance bit his lip. Under the table, his leg began to bounce. “At the funeral?” His  _ papá  _ nodded. “Well, okay, I don’t really know. I remember that I was really upset and, I dunno, pretty much talked myself into a panic attack, probably, I guess. Last thing I know for sure is sitting in the Holt’s, like, on the floor freaking out.”  _ For no reason _ , he almost added. Saying it all aloud flushed him inside with a prickling wash of shame. 

He’d worried everyone. The looks on his family’s faces, Pidge and Hunk sleeping upstairs, each of those things were weights tugging him down. Not to mention what happened afterward, when he was found. What did Shiro think? Pidge's parents? And he didn’t even want to think about Keith, no, no way, not happening.

Rachel gave him a funny look. Lance met it, a brow cocked. She leaned forward over the table towards him, and her eyes started shifting like she was reading lines of text in midair.

“You saw something,” she supplied, offhand. Her fingers fell to the table, tapping, drawing simple shapes. Her eyes kept sliding, unblinking. “A man. In a suit. Do you remember?”

As she said it, he realized he did. White pant legs, shoes to match. The  _ clip-clip-clip _ of sharp heels against tile. And his own stomach, wound tightly in on itself, the urge to vomit knocking against the backs of his teeth. 

He’d seen that.  _ Exactly _ that.

But how did Rachel know when he didn’t even remember?

“Oookay,” Lance breathed, and he pushed back from the table, chair legs squealing. “Nope, nah, done with this. I'm going back upstairs, and I'm going to pretend you didn’t just, uh--"

Again, Rachel supplied the words, “Read your mind?”

He balked. “Yeah! Yeah.  _ Yeah _ , that’s. . .totally what I was going to say.”

Veronica’s mouth went sideways, annoyed. “Rach, stop it. You’re freaking him out.”

Lance barked out a nervous laugh. That was an understatement.

At the head of the table, their  _ abuela  _ shook her head. Her hands, knobbled from old age and hard work, folded themselves neat, fingers lacing together. Lance focused his attention on her, and sank back in his seat, feeling thoroughly spooked.

Quietly, she said, her voice a waver in the night, flickering like the candles set in the windows, “This is your heritage,  _ mijo _ . Don’t be afraid of it.”

Their  _ mamá  _ spoke next, before Lance could interject, “We thought it might be the case since the other morning. Your hands, you told us they were broken. But they weren’t." Lance didn’t need to be reminded: He felt the horror of that morning even now, though his hands didn’t ache or spasm and, like then, they looked perfectly fine. “There’s been other things too, hasn’t there? That you didn’t tell us?”

Lance frowned in thought. Absentmindedly, he flexed his hands. “I don’t think so,” he admitted slowly.

“The crying counts,” Rachel brought up, speaking over the lip of her mug. “All of it. It’s the same thing, really.”

Lance couldn’t stop himself. “Seriously,  _ quit that _ ! Are you literally reading my mind, because--”

Rachel shrugged and said nothing.

Veronica seemed fed-up. “Don’t listen to her.” She rolled her eyes. “But, she has a point. At the funeral, you were out of it. I noticed. We all noticed and tried to keep an eye on you, but you slipped away and. . .well.” She hesitated here, looking towards their mother for, what Lance could guess was, permission?

His  _ mamá _ nodded her head. And, breathing a sigh, Veronica kept explaining.

“It’ll be best if I just come out and say it. And since Rach likes to show off. . .yes, you were right. No, hold on, let me finish.” She lifted a hand the same moment Lance opened his mouth to say something. “I know it sounds unbelievable and really, it would be, if you weren’t born into a family of it. Don’t give me that look: I already know you’ll accept it. I've seen the outcome of this since I was thirteen.”

Lance jerked back. “What the hell does that mean!”

Their mother cut in, finally, her voice calm in the midst of Lance’s rising anxiety. 

“We think you have a gift too. Like Rachel, and Veronica’s dreaming,” she said. “We weren’t sure until last night. But now we do. Lance, it’s why you’ve been taking in all the sadness around you. Why you saw the. . .spirit in the Holt’s kitchen.”

That shot through him.

He stared at her, stunned. A ghost? The man he’d seen was a  _ ghost _ ? There’s no way. Things like that didn’t exist. They were stories. Everything in Indigo Pull was only stories.

“They aren’t,” Rachel told him. Most of her teasing air had faded away. Right now, as she looked at him, she remained entirely serious.

Lance reeled. “So--so what? You’re a mind reader, and V, you? You’re like a?”

“I have prophetic dreams,” she described. “Not always, but those I do usually come true.”

“Great, okay, and?” Lance didn’t know who to ask next. It was all unreal and crazy and he was probably, definitely having some weird stress dream again. 

His mother smiled at him. “I know it’s a lot to take in,  _ corazoncito. _ Your sisters are acting bold about it now, but please understand, they went through the same thing you are.”

Lance had to point it out, “What about Marco? And Luis?”

Their  _ abuela _ answered this. “It usually follows the bloodlines of mothers. I can’t remember the last time a son had the gift.”

“Marco and Luis know about it,” their father said. “Like I know of it. They don't have the same abilities, though. Not like your mother. Not like your sisters or you.”

Lance regarded them all one at a time, and as he did, his mother reached over and held his hand. A headache that’d been starting to form--from lack of sleep, from stress, from sobbing himself sick two days in a row--instantly subsided. And he knew then what his mother’s gift was, what it had always been. He’d never realized. Not from her or his sisters. Or even, he was beginning to understand,  _ himself. _

He turned his hand over to hold her’s, and the table at large waited on him to speak. Rachel kept quiet now that the fun was out of it. Veronica watched him expectantly, already knowing, probably, what he was going to ask next.

“. . .what’s that make me,” he finally asked, glancing at his mother, then Veronica.

She nodded. It must’ve been the exact thing he’d said in her dreams. 

Their  _ abuela _ told him the truth of it, answering the reason behind the odd happenings over the last few weeks, of every strange thing that’d haunted him since August:

“We think you’re an Empath, Lance.”

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Hidden in the shadows of the hallway, pressed to either side of the kitchen door, Pidge and Hunk exchanged glances. 

Hunk’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. Pidge frowned to himself, replaying the conversation they’d heard. Not just empathetic---an  _ Empath _ . Pidge sorted between the definitions silently, comparing them to Lance’s experiences, the ones he knew of anyway. It certainly explained his mood yesterday, the way he seemed out of his own head and despairingly miserable. And something about a ghost? And when did Lance hurt his hands? Unless, he reasoned, they meant when he scraped them up pretty bad on Lion Castle’s hedges. There was a lot to go through, all dished out in this short exchange. His mind checked through every possible meaning it could be, in the short break between the conversation beyond the closed, kitchen door.

Lance had always been like that, quick to feel too much, especially when it came to him or Hunk or his siblings. He got upset when they did, borrowed their anger and spite when it rose. As otherworldly as it sounded, as completely insane, there was a bit of truth in it, as much as Pidge found it hard to believe.

Across from him, Hunk mouthed, ‘ _ An empath?’  _

Pidge lifted up his shoulders. 

They’d followed Lance down to the kitchen nearly right after he left the room. They were worried and couldn’t sleep without knowing Lance was okay. The fact he snuck around them stung a bit, but Pidge tried to let it go. Sometimes it was easier that way, handling things on your own.

His own honesty had been shaky at best lately, too.

A female voice lifted from the door, drawing both of their attention. They shouldn’t be here, sneaking around like this. Pidge wasn’t sure what would happen if they were caught.

“You know,” someone said, bored and knowing. Rachel. Hunk mouthed her name at Pidge like he didn’t recognize her tone. “You don’t have to stand around like that.”

A thrill shot up Pidge’s spine. Hunk pushed away from the wall as quickly--and quietly--as he could.

“What?” Lance’s voice now, confused. The sounds of wood creaking followed--him turning in his chair.

The door flew open.

Rachel stood there, smug as a plum, arms crossed over her chest. 

“Knew it,” she said triumphantly. 

Veronica heaved a sigh. “It doesn't matter. Lance would’ve told them anyway.”

Lance peered at the two of them from his chair, his blue eyes wide and catching the shifting light from the candle flames. He looked no different, just tired and drained from everything. His ears were a little pink, proof that what Veronica said had a ring of truth to it.

Still their Lance, all things considered. 

Pidge rubbed the back of his neck, playing at being sheepish more than he actually felt it. “Sorry,” he told the room, to Mrs. McClain in particular. 

She wore the face of a disappointed mother, and considering they’d all grown up together, close as siblings could be, this fell heavily on him out of anything else.

“Yeah, we knew we shouldn’t, but, you know, we were worried about Lance--he, like, literally passed out yesterday--and now he’s, what? Got super powers or something? Which, is way cool, dude, I'm a little jealous but also, like, mega relieved it wasn't, I don’t know, something really serious. Medically serious. Not supernaturally. Wait.” Hunk lifted his hands to his mouth. “ _ Is _ it serious?”

Lance turned to his mother. “ _ Is  _ it,” he asked her too.

She patted the top of his hand. “No,  _ mijo _ , you’re fine.”

“Once he stops overdoing it, yeah,” Rachel again, turning around. “You don’t  _ have _ to let things in. Block it out. You  _ are  _ in control of your own body.”

Lance frowned at her. “Okay, Obi-wan, it’s not like I expected to suddenly gain the Force or whatever! This is all really new and weird to me and I still kinda think it's a big joke.”

Hunk took a step into the room. “I have a question.”

Pidge nudged his glasses up nose. “I’ve got several.”

Lance rocked back in his chair, legs precariously balanced. “Yeah, same.”

Maria McClain seemed prepared for this. She sighed, shoulders sinking, and pointed to two open chairs. “I should've known. Have a seat, you two. We'll answer all we can.”

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


They talked well past morning, ran out of coffee twice and drank through half-a-box of tea. As best they could, Lance’s mother and grandmother told the history of their bloodline, what it meant, and how it had always given light to such odd ‘gifts’, as Diego liked to call them.

The first known was a great-great-something grandmother imported straight in from Cuba with the cigar and sugar trade. She found herself husband, started a small family of five daughters, and, if their  _ abuela  _ remembered right, had an uncanny knack for correctly guessing every hand in a poker game. She made a lot of money, illegally, which suited her just fine. Riding bribes across the sea made her strong-willed and sure of her ways, unbowed from the consequences of being so bold.

Turning out the same tricks in America--necessary to feed a large, growing family--drew a lot of unwanted attention.

“Local heads of a church found her out,” Lance’s  _ abuela _ murmured, voice another curl of steam rising from her teacup. “They pulled her to the public square and hung her on the grounds she was a witch.” 

The daughters old enough to have left home already were spared a similar fate. As for the husband, it was hard to say, the memory already too foggy to recall.

“You can see why we try to keep our history passed down verbally,” Maria McClain explained sympathetically.

Some daughters broke the rules, evident in a few, thin journals Rachel brought to the table. They’d been hidden in a hole in the wall, covered by removable bricks nearly seamless in design. This particularly impressed Pidge. The McClain secrets spread wide, it seemed, from person to person and from room to room of their quaint farmhouse.

Lance reached to pick one up, but then thought better of it. Hunk took it instead, thumbing through the time-worn pages with undeniable interest. 

These told of others--the timeline skewed and confused, their names long lost in memory or faded ink, faces blurry imprints left on photographs. What was remembered were the gifts they held. Prophets, like Veronica, each with her own preference. Some dreamed, some scryed in bowls of river water, others found their answers by looking at the stars. There were medicine women, like his mother, healers of spirit, body, or mind. A mother and daughter who could speak to animals, “Like me", said  _ abuela _ , grinning wide. A pair of twins with the same gift of ‘spirit-talking’, through one had to wait two hours after the moon rose and the other two hours after the moon set, two different times the veil thinned enough for listening in. One of the journals belonged to a telekinetic. Another journal, penned in the simple words of a farmer, told of girl who lived until she was sixteen thinking everyone else could see the same ‘halos of light’ shining off the backs of her sisters heads.

The most interesting was a boy who his  _ abuela  _ knew only as ‘a firespeaker’. Lance leaned forward at his mention, excited, but she only knew that he died during his teenage years.

“Fire,” she warned, “is not something taken lightly, gifted or not.”

She didn’t say so, but the impression that he burned to death hinted between the spaces of her words.

Lance shuddered. Hunk set down the book, brow in a twist, mouth set in a harsh, grim line. Pidge, for what it was worth, sat forward, the morning sun glinting off his glasses. He clasped his hands together, face set like he was working out a very large equation in his head.

Rachel explained the unspoken Rule they had, though the need for it seemed a little out of place, more a timely habit than anything else. For one, hanging witches had gone out of style nearly a century before. For two, cheats and fakes built shops all over the country, selling fortunes or love teas tucked in small organza bags, trinkets of the craft. The idea of ‘witches’ had become commonplace and, with it, drained the fear right out of most people. What could someone do with a pack of tarot cards anyway? What harm came from a fistful of tumbled, polished quartz? Nothing, as it were.

“Everything is marketed now,” Rachel remarked. “Which helps us. But, still, it wouldn’t be the smartest thing to run around showing off. Things can still happen.”

Like the warning needed said.

“It’s why we try to keep it in the family,” Rachel continued, glancing over at Pidge and Hunk.

They both looked unconcerned. 

“Who are we going to tell,” Pidge asked scrupulously.

Hunk folded his hands over themselves, glancing between Lance and Pidge and the rest of Lance’s kin. “Yeah, and besides, we’re, like, pretty much family. Right?”

Lance’s mother smiled over at him. “You are,” she agreed.

Hunk smiled back.

Leg bouncing again, arms crossed, his fingers fluttering against his bare arms, Lance glanced over at Veronica, because she, out of them all, had hinted at this for a lot longer than anyone else. Because she’d already  _ known _ this moment would happen. Lance remembered her cryptic words from standing in front Lion Castle, her small barbs tossed at him that, at the time, came off like teasing jokes.

“Okay, so, is that what this all is?” He pointed to a journal, the same one Hunk dropped. The cover, a smooth, worn leather, had the imprint of a star at the center. Its binding, lined and soft. “We’re, what?  _ Witches _ ?”

Veronica laughed. “No. Not really. But it’s easy to be confused. Think more like. . .” She trailed off, trying to think of a better term.

Pidge piped in, “Psychics?”

V snapped her fingers. She smiled, and Lance had the sudden impression she’d waited on purpose, for her dream to play out exactly as it always would. “Close enough. No spells, no gimmick, just our own unique gifts. Though, honestly, I think a few of our ancestors kept their own Book of Shadows. Maybe it helped them make better sense of it, thinking that way.”

“Huh.” Lance glanced down at the books again. There were only five, and the thickest one was stuffed full of torn, found pages of loose paper. Their corners, bent or worn nearly away, fanned out like the petals of a small, white flower. “Okay.”

The Rule was simple: Don’t get caught. Which meant no ‘showing off’ as Rachel put it or ‘making bad decisions’ as Veronica explained. This stemmed from their great-great-something grandmother who put on shows of blatant all-knowing.  _ Don’t be like her and you'll be fine _ . 

Lance sat there and took this all in, every new piece of information, chewing on it like he chewed on the biscuits and gravy his mother cooked up while they talked. His father kept quiet the entire time, but Lance notice his brown eyes lifted up again and again to look at him. 

Through all the talk of his distant family, Lance had a niggling thought, and he voiced it after his mother sat down from the stove and everyone had a loaded plate in front of them.

“You guys said that I saw a ghost,” he brought up again, a shiver slipping up his spine. “They really exist? And what about. . .what  _ else _ ?”

Veronica set down her fork. She borrowed Pidge’s earlier stance, folded her hands, perching her chin on top her knuckles. “ _ Energy _ exists. And a soul, simply put, is a type of energy, no matter where it may be. Though, if you are Empathic, then you may have seen an imprint of something instead. An emotion so strong it left behind a visible echo.” She tilted her head; sunlight rolled off her glasses. “Did it  _ feel _ like something? Anger? Sadness?”

Lance didn’t need to think about it. 

At once, he said, “Fear.”

The wrinkles on his  _ mamá's _ forehead creased. Veronica sat back, hands falling to the table. Rachel frowned and folded her arms, hands covering her elbows. She paled, seeing what Lance saw again, and in a way, felt the same residual feeling.

Lance caught her eye. “Right?”

“Mind-reading isn’t exactly. . . _ exact _ . If you think it’s right, then that’s what I'll pick up on. It  _ feels _ right. I can tell you aren’t lying or mistaken from your memory, if it helps.”

It really didn’t.

Lance’s foot started tapping. Pidge glanced over at him. Hunk, like always, reached over to reassure him. It happened like an afterthought--he didn’t even glance up from his plate as he ate. Lance forced himself to stop.

From the head of the table, the knife-bite of metal on ceramic made the three of them glance over at his  _ abuela _ . 

“It sounds like it was both,” she reasoned out loud. “A ghost and an imprint of its fear. It’s no wonder you reacted the way you did.” She broke a biscuit apart with her hands, lifting it shakily to her mouth, crumbs falling away like dust. She chewed a moment, and the table kept quiet, expectant, on what else she might say. “There’s things out there that we don’t even know about. Keep that in mind, Lance.”

Lance waited on her to explain more, wanted her to, but she simply dropped her hands back down, broke another piece off her biscuit and started eating again.

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


As a soft punishment for eavesdropping, Maria sent Hunk and Pidge out to the yard with Lance with the task of tending to the chickens and cows. None of them minded this work. It came as a welcomed distraction from everything, and gave the three time to talk amongst themselves. And, as Lance made sure to ask, first thing he could, allowed the full story of after the funeral to be told.

Pidge explained it, best he remembered. Hunk supplied details when Pidge faltered. Their worry from yesterday felt fresh in the air, and it startled Lance to recognize it like a color of a shirt or the various smells of a big breakfast. Each emotion held a slightly different note to it, and if Lance focused a bit, he liked to think that he honed in on what Pidge was feeling over what Hunk was, and vice versa.

It wasn’t anything new. It just had a name now, and a reason, if Lance was being entirely honest with himself.

As they walked up to the chicken coup, Pidge started his story:

“We’d let you go for five minutes, that's what we decided. If you didn’t come back then we were going after you, and good thing we did,” he said smartly, and threw a punch to Lance’s arm. “You go off and lose consciousness for nearly half-a-day!”

Lance winced. “It’s not like I did it on purpose!”

“You’re lucky it wasn’t--we were all worried sick! Do you know what it was like, finding you on the floor, completely out of it, staring straight ahead like you saw a--a--"

“Ghost,” Hunk finished, brow twisted up. “Though, I guess you did, so. That’s still messed up. Ghosts are real too? Aw,  _ man _ , not cool.”

Anxiety, purely Hunk’s design, writhed and snaked right into Lance’s own heart without asking. But was it really? Or was Lance putting names to things he only thought he felt?

Regardless, his hands started to shake.

Annoyance, from Pidge, filled the air like his heated yelling. Again, Lance wasn’t entirely sure.

“Hold on, I'll get to that, but first.” Pidge wheeled on Lance again, startling him back to present. “You’re doing it again!”

Lance threw up his arms. “I don’t know how to stop! It’s not like there’s a manual for this. . . _ thing _ ?”

“When I get back home, I'm logging anything I can find and I'll make you one my damn myself,” Pidge told him determinedly. “Comics have Empaths all the time. Movies, books, games. Jean Gray, hello? People aren’t as creative as they think, it must all be based on some fact, and if there’s facts, I'll find them. There might be whole networks of people who can do the same things. Who knows! If there’s your family, what’s to say there aren’t, what, dozens and dozens of others?”

They paused at the coup, listening, for a moment, at the new chicks peeping out a soft ‘good morning’. In the break of silence, Lance knelt down to fish two out, thinking on what Pidge said. He glanced back at them, the chicks pecking at his fingers fondly. Pidge wanted no part, but Hunk did, and he took one in his large, gentle hands, lovingly rubbing his thumbs over its' soft, yellow down.

Lance took it as a moment to apologize, to both of them. “I'm sorry I did that to you guys. I should’ve told you what was going on in my head, and not. . .ignored it for so long."

Hunk bumped their shoulders together. “I'm just glad you’re okay. When I saw you. . . I'll be honest, I thought you were having a seizure or something. And then you wouldn’t wake up no matter what we tried. I thought. . .You gotta understand, it looked really bad. We were all freaked. Keith--" He hesitated, looking down at the baby chick.

Lance looked at him expectantly. He held his breath.

“. . .he looked pretty messed up. I've never seen him that worried before, except, well, about Shiro,” Hunk finished. He rubbed his thumbs over the chick’s little head, mindful of its’ small eyes. “Shiro was worried about you, too. He thought you might’ve gotten sick cause of the humidity. It had gotten pretty hot out.”

“Keith carried you into the lounge,” Pidge went on. Some of the heat faded from his voice, and, likewise, from the air. “If you don’t remember that part."

Lance flushed from his throat to his ears. “He  _ what _ ?”

“He cradled you in his arms,” Pidge teased; Lance scowled at him, which had entirely the opposite effect he’d been going for. “I'm not lying. He picked you up and put you on one of the couches.”

So Keith was the one he remembered, the smell of pine trees, the feeling of strong arms lifting him up. . . That was  _ him _ . 

He covered his face with a hand. “Of course he did,” he murmured to himself. 

Hunk laughed gently and thumped a hand against Lance’s back.

“So, is there anything else you’re hiding from us,” he pried.

If it’d been any other day, Lance would have instantly bristled. But today, with everything else going on, with what happened yesterday still fresh on their minds, he didn’t have the heart. He  _ was _ grateful for Hunk’s good humor, however. It made him feel loads better.

Instead of picking fights, Lance answered him honestly. “I think there’s more to all this than even mom said. Like, I guess it adds up, with everything else, but why did my hands hurt like they did?” At his friends’ confused stares, Lance rambled out an explanation. “Oh. Yeah. Right, I didn’t mention it. I thought it was because of a bad dream or something. But the other night I woke up feeling like my knuckles had broken.”

Hunk gave him a funny look. Carefully he asked, “What do you mean ‘broken’?”

Lance held up his hands, palms out. He bent his fingers for emphasis. “I mean  _ broken _ -broken. I couldn’t even move them. It faded away after a bit, but it scared me real bad.” He turned his hands around to look at them, brow knit. “My folks think it has something to do with. . .all this.”

A quick gesture at his entire person. He felt suddenly unhappy.

“Whatever  _ this  _ is,” Lance murmured.

Pidge and Hunk looked at him, watched him shuffle away, depositing the chick down with the rest. Lance kept to the fence, head down, focusing on the chickens fluttering and strutting around. 

He heard hay crunch underfoot as his friends came close again, standing to either side of him.

“It sounds theoretically impossible, but I don’t think your family would’ve lied to you. About anything,” Pidge said, reassuringly. “And Hunk and I've noticed what they’re talking about. You’ve been off the last few weeks.”

Quietly, Hunk added, “Like, you cried in front of Lion Castle the other night. I thought it was, well. . .because it kinda felt like everything was changing really fast. And, I know how much you love thinking of that mansion as a haunted house. I kinda felt it, too. But I guess it was this. Maybe Allura or her uncle or someone was really upset and you picked up on it.”

Lance thumped his forehead against the fence, crossing his arms over his head, hiding. “. . .Maybe.”

They were quiet again. The chickens clucked and clucked, hungry and making sure it was known.

September held onto the heat of August, at least today, at least this morning. Sweat rolled down the back of Hunk’s neck, slicked Pidge’s nose, and dampened Lance’s hair. And still, they stood there, ignoring their chores, watching the chickens flutter and fluff and  _ bawk _ impatiently. Under any other circumstance, this would have the same design as just other Saturday at the McClain’s. There was a confusing mix of nostalgia, like they all remembered how it used to be and how this wasn’t it any longer.

All because of this big family secret. Because Lance was suddenly very different, very new, though he didn’t feel like it. He was tired and unhappy and a little scared, but he didn’t feel any different than that.

From one side, Hunk leaned against him, his weight craning the both of them into Pidge, balanced on his sneakers halfway up the fence. In chorus, they told Lance, “You’re doing it again!” with the same cadence of an inside joke, their mouths ready to smile, their teeth quick to flash.

Lance looked between them, and, despite everything, laughed.

“You know, I might be a mind reader too,” Pidge quipped, nudging his glasses up with an impressive air. “Because I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

Lance side-eyed him. “That so, pidgeon?”

“Oh, without a doubt. You’re worried about what we think, don’t you?”

Hunk nodded his head sagely. “Oh, no, that’s definitely it. I'm picking up some strong ‘they probably think I'm a freak’ vibes from Lance’s aura. Which, gotta say, dude, yellow is not your color.”

Lance groaned. But they nailed it. The two of them knew him better than he even knew himself. It comforted him as much as their closeness did, as how, through the entire morning, neither of them seemed affected by the news. For all it was worth, his family could’ve told them he’d gotten a new haircut. The effect would’ve been the same.

“Guys, come on--"

Pidge wasn’t having any of it. “What? Do you think we’re suddenly going to drop you like a bad cold fusion hypothesis? Please. I thought you knew us better than that.”

“Yeah, this thing doesn’t matter. It’s still a part of you, right?” Hunk smiled at him. “You’re still my bud. Nothing’s ever gonna change that.”

Feeling three hearts align in the same mutual affection nearly sent Lance off his feet.

He clasped his hands on the fence to steady himself, and grit his teeth down, swallowing down this sudden surge of emotion. It wasn’t all his own. It bubbled and popped against his consciousness, aware and alert, different and similar and all branching from the same source, like a river that became new creeks and streams.

Pidge leaned into him, eyes searching his face. There wasn’t any fear there, only the open curiosity Pidge was known for. “What’s it like,” he asked him, correctly guessing what’d happened. “Does it feel weird?”

Lance thought about it. His hands fluttered and moved. His chest felt light and airy. “No, not weird. Like. . .normal? But not. I don’t know, but I really  _ felt  _ it that time. How much you guys. . .” He veered off, and looked into the pin again. 

“Love you,” Hunk finished, because of course he knew.

Lance nodded. “Unless I’m just thinking it’s happening. I don’t know. I don’t have much to go on.”

“Then we’ll figure it out together,” Pidge reminded him again, and that, was that.

For the remainder of the morning, Pidge and Hunk made a game out of it. They took turns thinking on things that made them upset or angry, and waited to see if Lance could correctly identify a change.

More often than not, even if it came subtly or at full force, it  _ did _ affect Lance a little differently.

As Lance tossed handfuls of dried corn to the chickens, he paused, blinked hard, and his eyes went glassy. He looked to Hunk, on the verge of crying.

Hunk nodded. “I was thinking of my grandma being sick in the hospital last summer.” 

Lance brushed at his eyes. “Huh, yeah, okay.”

Another time, while Lance and Pidge checked the cows water, he went tense, slamming his hands against the lip of the metal trough. He wheeled on Pidge immediately, his hand up, pointing, fingers shaking. 

“Do. Not.” He said it without thinking. 

Pidge blinked back, acting indifferent. “What?”

“I  _ hate  _ that guy, and you’re bringing him up?” Lance scowled. “Not cool, Pidge.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You didn’t have to!” And he stormed off to fetch the hose at the other end of the barn with Pidge watching him go.

He hadn’t been wrong then, either.

For every little thing, new questions arose. About his hands, about his crying fits, about the man in the kitchen. Pidge and Hunk asked questions, and they all tried to work them out the best they could. No, neither Pidge or Hunk had hurt their hands the night Lance felt like his had. Neither of them were sad the night at Lion Castle that they knew of. No, he hadn’t seen a face, just legs and shoes. No, he wasn’t sure who it could be. All he knew was what he already told them--that it walked towards the service outside and disappeared sometime before it made it to the door.

Pidge crossed his arms. “My house is old,” he remarked, as the three of them finished up the last of the chores. A late afternoon sky hung over them, gold and warm, yesterday’s rains fled off towards the westward crop of mountains. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s haunted.”

“Okay, don’t just say that, I still wanna sleep over sometimes,” Hunk muttered.

Lance rubbed at his throat, quiet for a moment. “We could see,” he pointed out. “Right? Maybe I can see it again.”

Pidge and Hunk both said “No!” at the same time, in the same tone.

He jerked back. “Why not!”

“Uh, did you just forget the last twenty-four hours, Lance? That’s why!” Pidge poked him in the chest. “So, no. You’re not doing that.”

“Oh, so I’ll just be banned from your house forever then?” he bit back.

“No, I’m not saying that, and you know it!”

Hunk sighed. He rubbed his hands over his face. “Guys, come on, not now.”

Lance turned to him. “Well, then, what do you think?”

“You already know what I think,” Hunk said, a voice of calm. “I don’t want you to be in any position that you’re literally going to get hurt in. And you know what? That happened yesterday. So, I guess I’m with Pidge.”

Lance threw up his arms, but then felt silly and dropped them. His friends were right. 

Lance admitted defeat. “Fine, okay, I was just saying anyway. It’d be nice to have one mystery solved, at least.”

“Not at your expense,” Pidge told him, patting his palms against his jeans. Farmyard dirt puffed from each, patches of muck brown stains against his knees and bottom hem of his pants. 

Hunk wore similar badges of the day’s work. Lance, too, down to the grit under his fingernails. They’d ended up doing more than what’d been asked, mucked stalls out and watered the goat and cows, made sure every animal had enough food for the day. For no better reason than to waste time, they’d even plucked each wayward briar from the coats of three young calves. Lance’s fingertips still stung from it.

Collectively, they were tired, well-worked, and hungry again.

What else the day wanted to give them, it would wait until their bellies were full.

Lance jerked a thumb back towards the house. He’d win no arguments today, or in those following, and the sooner he accepted it, the better he’d feel about everything going on. He knew this as he knew the best way to handle chickens or to find smooth stones in the riverbed. 

So he told his friends, “Let’s call it quits and get dinner. I bet mom’s making something good for us for doing all the chores.”

Hunk eyed him, then looked beyond, towards the house a little bit away. Sunlight on the windows looked bright as fire. “I hope so. I’m starved half-to-death.”

Pidge agreed, “Same.”

“Then let’s go!” Lance’s slapped his hands against their backs, and half-pushing, half-walking them down the worn path in the field, the three made their way back to the McClain’s house as the dying afternoon bled into a magenta evening sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing all of your comments and questions makes me smile! Thank you, guys! I don't wanna say too much, but just know all of the questions get answered later on!


	9. Chapter 9

The evening brought another surprise in Keith Kogane, dressed again in borrowed clothes, and very much standing on the McClain’s front porch. He looked out of place, a little confused, a little determined, and relieved? It showed in the bow of his brows, the way he stood two steps too far from the door, in how some of the tension rolled off his shoulders when he saw Lance standing there.

Lance had been the one to answer his knocking. The smells of dinner wafted out from the open door, meaty gravy and the crisp sugar glaze of an apple pie. His mother called behind him, voice rising from the kitchen, “Who is it, Lance?”

All these things, or maybe Lance standing there, made Keith shuffle back when the door opened. Lance didn’t understand why it would bother him. 

Keith lifted a hand, fingers fluttering in the barest of waves. “Hey. Sorry. I guess I interrupted dinner.”

Lance shook his head. His insides squirmed. “Ah, no. No, you didn’t. We just finished, actually. What’s up?”

“I--"

Again, Maria McClain’s voice cut through the air, “_ Mijo _?”

Shooting Keith an apologetic wince, Lance half-turned, hollering over his shoulder. “It’s Keith, Mom!”

Her head appeared down the hall, the slight slope of her shoulders dipping past the doorway’s worn wood. She beamed bright enough Keith could’ve seen it in the dark. “Oh! Hello, Keith,” she said and waved at him with sudsy fingers.

“Hi, Mrs. McClain,” he answered politely, right before Lance called back, “I'm stepping outside!” and promptly shut the door on any more possible interruptions.

“So,” Lance tried again. “What’s up?”

At the same time Keith told him, “You look like you’re doing better.”

Lance’s ears immediately flushed pink. With a laugh, Lance held out his arms, shrugging his shoulders. “Yeah, I'm fine now. I, uh. . . I’m sorry. Pidge told me about what happened. I. . .I guess I freaked everyone out pretty bad.”

Keith was staring at him in a searching away, like he didn’t really believe him when he said he was fine. The soft sight of his caring warmed Lance right through.

“It doesn’t matter,” Keith told him. He realized what he was doing and crossed his arms, looking off down the porch where the only interesting thing to see was a bench swing gently rocking from the wind. “As long as you’re okay now.”

Lance's first impulse was to crack a joke. The second, to make a slightly-less humorous jab. But he resisted because, really, what’d happened wasn’t funny. The _ reason _ wasn’t funny. All the things he learned that morning--things he thought on all day, between Pidge and Hunk’s distractions--wasn’t funny either. The two of them left right after eating, called home by their parents. They wanted to stay, but Lance urged them on, saying he’d meet them tomorrow or Monday morning before school. Honestly, he needed a break from feeling what they were feeling. Games aside, the more he practiced, the easier it came, and for the rest of the day, Lance quietly felt Pidge and Hunk’s undertow worry as his own, twofold, and it was rocking him dangerously close toward another panic attack.

He didn’t mention that part, though. Lance kept it secret, swallowed it down best he could.

Lance sank back against the door, arms lowered, chewing on his lower lip. “Yeah,” he told Keith. “I guess so. Is that why you’re here? To check up on me?”

A slight tease.

It soared right over Keith’s head.

“Yeah,” he answered immediately, honestly. Lance was touched again, chest ballooned with warmth. His own? Or Keith’s? Lance couldn’t tell. “We were worried.”

‘We’ had to mean Shiro. That good feeling leached away into guilt. As if attending the funeral of your fiance wasn’t bad enough, just toss in a kid having a massive anxiety attack on the kitchen floor. Lance frowned down at his bare feet, hooking one behind the other, his own shoulders slumping down.

“I'm sorry, I really am. How is he,” he asked, trying to derail the topic away from him. “Shiro?”

Keith glanced back at him at the name. His eyes were amethyst dark in the falling night. “Doing what he always does. Being strong even when he doesn’t need to be.”

Lance had the distinct feeling this was an old argument, an old kind of associated pain. He thought back to Shiro at the funeral--his mild manner, the dry eyes, the careful way he told his stories and talked to his people. All things to make it as easy as possible for everyone around him. But not on himself.

Lance rubbed his palm across his throat. “A lot’s happened to him,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. It didn’t make it any less true. Keith knew Shiro better than anyone, and anything Lance could say in his defense would be hollow words. Pidge would be better at this. Pidge, at least, _ knew _ Shiro.

And what did Lance know?

Keith watched him for a moment. His eyes dipped down to his hand, resting at the same curve of neck Lance curled his fingers over, then glanced away, up at the porch light buzzing with moths and flies and all of Lance’s unspoken things.

The night thrived around them. It fluttered, and it drifted as wind through the growing hay fields, drawing the heady smells of the McClain farm up. Distantly, the chickens clucked and fluttered. A dozen cows trooped through the fields, bells knocking, hooves drumming against the earth. Frog-song and cricket-song and bird-song battled for any ear that would listen. The sky was absolutely alive with stars.

Lance smiled despite himself.

Here and now, it felt as it ever did: Safe. This, his home. This, his own heart, living outside of him done up in the colors of evergreen and soil and the porchlight’s resilient orange glow.

Keith caught his smile, as he kept catching all the other small things Lance unconsciously tried to give him.

He said, “Would you feel up for a walk?”

And Lance, almost expecting it, nodded, and told him, “Yeah, I think I can manage that. One sec.”

Leaving Keith on the porch, Lance slipped back inside and once alone in the hall, he let his grin come out full force. He pressed his hands over his face to hide it, as if Keith could see it through the door, then ran up to his room, shaking his wrists and muttering to himself. “_ Stop acting like a moron. It’s just a walk, stupid _.”

It still made his insides squirm and clench, his heart flutter and skip.

Keith was still there when he returned.

He’d moved down off the porch by then and stood on the beaten path leading up towards the stairs. His chin was tilted up, and his eyes were lost above, scanning over the constellations. Moonlight kissed his face in silver.

Lance stepped up behind him. “You ready?”

Keith’s eyes drifted to his. “Are you?”

Lifting a foot, Lance wiggled it to show off his shoes. Keith cocked a brow, half his mouth quirked up. “Now that I’m not barefooted, yeah.”

“Really? You always struck me as the type who liked being barefoot.”

“I don’t know how far this ‘walk’ might take us, and I’m not about to slap around downtown without shoes on. Please, I do have _ some _ decency.”

Keith shook his head. Was it just the late night, or did Lance detect the ghost of a laugh trying to form? “You really do feel better, don’t you?”

Lance, who was not a stranger to showing how he felt on the outside, grinned and casually pranced a few steps forward. “I can’t imagine what gave it away.”

The two of them took off into the dark, side-by-side, Keith’s attention on the road ahead and Lance’s split between him and the sky. The moon hung bright and heavy. All of Indigo Pull’s sweeping hills and snaking roads stood out beneath its generous light.

They followed the road, connecting the dots of the streetlights. From the McClain farm, they traveled into a small neighborhood squashed between dying cotton fields. Most of the houses were still lit up, windows glowing, the shadows of people darting past blinds or curtains. It set Lance in the mind of Lion Castle, and he watched them as they walked past, this small show in the dark. More than once, someone watched back from screen doors or second story windows. Sometimes, the windows went dark without warning, or turned to the flickering pulse cast off a tv.

“What are you looking at,” Keith asked him, his voice pitched low, soft as always.

Lance pointed--to this house, to the next. “I’m watching them,” he said. “Which totally sounds sketchy. Okay, wait, hold on. The shadows, I guess. If that makes sense?” He grimaced. “Nope. Still kinda bad.”

Keith tilted his head. For his credit, Keith glanced between the lit windows, hopscotching from upstairs to downstairs to houses across the street. “Why?”

That Lance had to think on. They walked past a few more houses, made it to the gentle decline in the road that led further into town, and stopped there, under the blue-cast of a streetlight. Water gurgled from the half-full ditches flanking either side. Distantly, they could hear the singing river, the late-night commute of cars and the rattling skeleton of a passing freight train.

“I don’t really know. It’s kinda like that one thing--that one word--I can’t remember it,” Lance huffed. He crossed his arms and started tapping a foot, trying hard to catch at what he was attempting to say. He could _ hear _ the word in his head, but it got jammed somewhere in his throat, lost back to letters. “But, it’s like a little glimpse into their lives. Like, have you ever watched someone at the grocery store or just out around town and suddenly realize they’re living their own lives, doing their own things? And there you are, living _ your _ own life doing _ your _ own things, and it feels both like it’s part of something _ huge _ but also still really small?” He scowled. “I don’t know if that’s it, exactly. It’s. . .interesting. How about I just say that.”

As he spoke, Keith looked over at the house closest to them, the downstairs windows bright, nearly transparent curtains bracketing the glass. Beyond, the blurry impressions of a painting-filled wall could be seen, an open doorway to an attached dining room, glints of moving elbows and shoulders from the family inside as they ate together at a table. Lance watched it too.

“Yeah,” Keith muttered. “I think I get what you’re saying.”

Lance sighed out a breath.

“Still makes you sound. . .what was it? _ Sketchy _, though,” he said, in a way that both sounded like teasing and didn’t.

“Hey! For the record, I’m _ not _.” He pressed a splayed hand over his heart, playfully insulted.

Keith shrugged and started down the road again, hiding the telling signs of a smile by facing away. “How can I be sure about that?”

“Because you _ know _ me. Also, do I look like I’d do something like that?” 

“Hm. Dunno. Maybe.”

“Seriously?!” Lance’s voice pitched up, exasperated. He snapped out his arms. “And what, exactly, makes _ me _ look like a seedy criminal? _ You _ look more the type than I do, Mister I-only-own-black!”

Keith’s dark jeans and large, black shirt offered no rescue from that accusation. Lance watched him pluck at the front of his shirt, then glance back at him. His dark eyebrows were raised.

“. . .who said I wasn’t? I could be walking you out here for a reason. Maybe this was my plan all along,” Keith deadpanned.

“_ Ha ha _, very funny.” Lance waved him off. “If that’s your intention you could’ve done something at the river, and you didn’t. So, I’m placing all my chips on ‘I’m safe’.”

“Suit yourself.” 

Lance didn’t let up. He stepped right up to him, closer than they had been, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. “Why _ did _ you wanna go for a walk,” he asked, blunt, leaning towards him.

Keith caught his eye. “If you don’t want to, we can turn back. We aren’t that far from your house.”

No, but they were closer to the Garrett's Garage now, which meant closer to town. If they kept the way they were going, they’d pass by Hunk’s and wind up smack middle of Indigo Pull’s small business district. Most shops would be dark-windowed and locked up by now, the downtown grid of roads barren. Only the diner would still be open, probably emptying out of the dinner-rush. The churches too, if it had been a day later.

“I didn’t say that,” Lance said and drifted back a bit. “Just wanted to know.”

The crickets told him more in that moment than Keith did.

They walked on. The wind kicked up and hissed like serpents hiding in the brush. Lance folded his arms and shuddered.

It was a bit stupid, wandering around outside at night, even in the middle of town. The same thing could be said for when they spent half the night by the riverside, skipping stones and talking. 

Indigo Pull wasn’t exactly safe. 

It felt as it always did that balmy September evening, a little too hot to be comfortable, a little too humid, but _ the same _. It was easy to forget someone had been murdered a week ago. That a funeral happened just yesterday afternoon.

Maybe they should turn back.

If Lance didn’t want this, whatever _ this _ was, he might’ve suggested it.

Instead, he let Keith lead them to the diner, of all places, to an empty booth right in the back. The glare of artificial light fell like a thin protection around them. It made the windows almost impossible to see out of.

“If you were hungry, you could’ve said. Mom had plenty of leftovers.” Lance didn’t mention the plate they’d set out for him in case he showed up. That was a little too private, even if it was for Keith’s benefit. Why did they still leave a place for him anyway, if it was apparent Keith wasn’t going to take it?

“That’s not why--” Keith stopped as their waitress came up.

She flipped open her little notepad and asked for their drink orders. Keith wanted a coffee, and for no other reason than he could, Lance ordered a strawberry milkshake to sip on. The waitress penned it down and flounced off, giving them a wide smile and a wink. She was the same one that worked nearly every night, pulling the lonely night shift hours with only the cook in the back and the occasional customer for company. Pidge and Lance and Hunk liked to hole up in here over their free summer nights, always talking late, but no matter how long they stayed, she was quick to give them refills and tell them ‘I’ll see y’all next time’ with heavy, Southern honesty whenever they left.

Another familiar part of Indigo Pull.

Lance turned back to Keith once the waitress had vanished in the back. “What were you saying?”

It caught Keith off-guard. “What? Oh. I’m not hungry,” he admitted. 

“Then why the diner?”

Keith frowned. “I thought it was obvious.”

Lance waited. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

A song crooned from a neon-ribbed jukebox on the same back wall their booth sat. It sounded vaguely similar to one Lance liked and knew, though all the lyrics he picked up were wrong, verses he couldn’t sing along to. Lance thought it better to wait on their drinks before he asked Keith for a better answer. He didn’t know how another interruption would go, if it would startled away whatever excuse Keith would tell him next.

The waitress arrived within a few minutes, in the span of another song change on the jukebox, and gave them their drinks. Once she left again, Lance wrapped his cold-hands over the frosted glass of his milkshake, and reckoned this could only mean one thing. 

He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“So. . .what is this,” he asked, and at once, his throat flushed.

Keith nudged his coffee mug, fidgeting. His eyes were tilted down. “What do you want it to be,” he asked him back, barely heard above the music.

Lance slipped his hands down to the table. His fingertips left wet streaks against the plastic. “I--"

_ What did it mean? _

_ Something out of nothing. _

Lance watched Keith the same way he watched backlit windows at night and strangers during broad daylight. Those all had a faint sense of mystery, a living question he could pick apart or make his own answers for. Keith sat right in the middle of known and unknown. He _ knew _ him, spent three years of school goading him with taunts and races and only slightly offensive nicknames. But he also didn’t know him now, after a year-long grieving stole him away from Indigo Pull and those who knew him best.

Painted violet eyes turned up to meet his.

There came that same knocking in his heart, that excited shift in his belly. Lance knew what he wanted--he’d been trying to ignore it for years, spent all his time making excuses or denying what all this meant.

It wasn’t ‘something out of nothing’. It was never that.

He hesitated.

“I quit track,” he blurted out, much to Keith’s and his own surprise.

The next came a little haltingly, like Keith didn’t know how to take the sudden change of topic. “You quit track?” He pushed his mug away. “Why?”

Lance took his time answering. He said, “It wasn’t the same, I guess. The fun went out of it.” And when he did, he knew it was true. At the time, he didn’t think that. He had excuses and excuses--costs of shoes and uniforms, how much time practice ate up, the sometime day-length drives to meets--but they were only partially the reason.

If he let himself think on it, Lance would’ve realized the same thing then as he realized now: It wasn’t fun anymore because the one reason he stayed had left.

“‘The fun went out of it’,” Keith repeated, head cocked.

Lance let himself look. The lights from the jukebox touched his hair in color, the red vinyl booth bright against the dark of Keith’s shirt. There was nothing special about this, about Keith’s wind-tossed hair or the slightly downward tilt of his eyes, their shared table, the sweating milkshake or the coffee growing colder by the word. So why it felt like sparks and wildfire, all tingling and heat, Lance couldn’t possibly say. Other than he’d wanted this for a long, long time and finally having it, well. . .

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Lance agreed. He waited, watched Keith expectantly.

What did this all mean for _ him _?

Keith sank back against the booth, folding his arms in that way of his, his hands curled over his elbows--and Lance saw his knuckles then, under the unforgiving diner lights. 

They weren’t bruised exactly but dusted in angry red, thin cuts split down the high peaks where the skin thinned over his knucklebones. The color traveled down his fingers, to the back of his hand--no, _ both _ of his hands.

Lance sat up with a start.

_ He woke up screaming, his hands broken _.

From a great distance, Keith spoke up, unaltered in the moment, still threading the conversation Lance all but entirely forgot about. “. . .Was it because I dropped out?”

_ He’d been so sure that he couldn’t even move them. _

Keith waited on him to say something.

_ The burning agony of them was something Lance still remembered. _

Under the table, Keith prodded him with the toe of his boot. “Lance?”

That brought him back. 

Lance slapped his own hands on the table, the quick _ pop _ startling Keith; the waitress behind the counter turned on her heel, asking the open air, “Sugar?”

He apologized to her first. “Sorry, ma’am!” Then, turning to Keith, Lance said quieter, “Sorry.”

Keith blinked at him. His brows twisted up, his mouth fell into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

_ I _ felt _ it when you hurt your hands _, Lance thought, his fingers twitching. He brought them up, and without hesitating, he grasped Keith’s hand, coaxing it forward under the light. Keith didn’t flinch when Lance ran his thumbs over them, didn’t try to pull his hand away. They held heat. He didn’t think--Lance let the pain of them roll into his own hands, slip down over his knuckles, smooth as water, and knew it was the same as the morning he woke up screaming.

“What happened to your hands,” he asked, blue eyes up. His fingers drifted back, leaving Keith’s pain his own again.

The confusion Keith wore, his jutting chin and squinting eyes, worried Lance more than realizing he’d almost been caught. It feathered along his consciousness in brittle recognition, not as easy to understand as Pidge and Hunk’s brilliant emotions.

“I banged them up,” Keith explained. And then he hid his hands beneath the table, the confession of red bruises left for the shadows to tease.

“How? When?” Lance knew it sounded odd, his questioning, but his curiosity won over. Those hurt knuckles once belonged to him. He wanted to know _ why _ and what happened.

Keith sighed. “I. . .did something stupid,” he admitted, and even though Lance waited for more explanation, Keith didn’t offer one up. 

“They. . .look rough. Do they hurt?” Lance already knew.

Keith shrugged, unaffected. “Not bad.”

_ He’s lying _. Or didn’t want him to worry about it. Understanding Keith’s moods and feelings was like trying to understand swirling cloud patterns or churning tide pools. There was too much to focus on and everything broke apart the longer he paid attention to it, until it eventually fizzled and turned to nothing at all. He tried. Now, with nothing else but soft music and their conversation, Lance tried to sense the same things he had with his friends. At one moment, there was that confusion, the next a careful nothingness, and then a soft itch that stood out of place. That came more naturally. It rose and tickled the back of his own throat, lurched something deep in his gut. He couldn’t name it, and in the next instant, as Keith leaned forward to speak, it drifted out of reach.

“I’m okay, Lance,” he said under the music.

Lance looked up at him again. He worked his mouth into an easy grin, leaning back to his own seat. “We need to chill out with hurting our hands, don’t we,” he joked. Keith snorted, close to a laugh as he was going to get. “Sorry, though. What were you saying?”

Keith didn’t even think on it. “I asked why you stopped going to track.”

Close enough. Lance remembered the actual way he had asked, placing himself as the reason. Which was true, if Lance wanted to admit it out loud. “Well, that’s hard to say. You. . .” His smile slipped some. “. . .Well, okay, yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Keith didn’t miss a beat. “Why? What does that have to do with anything?” 

“Honestly?. . .Because I’ve been chasing after you for years.”

Keith looked at him. His coffee had gone cold, as forgotten as Lance’s melted shake.

“I mean,” Lance continued, a little nervous, a little self-conscious. “You always got better grades, better times, better everything. And at first, I was really trying to beat you. _ Really _ trying. That whole rivalry thing? Yeah, I was bent out of shape trying to be? you? As good as you. Better. So maybe. . .” He went quiet.

“Maybe,” Keith prompted.

This was hard to say. But he’d come this far, talked his way right into this mess, and despite everything, he needed to know what this all was. Those moments at the Holt’s in the kitchen, the lobby with its orange lights. The river. This trip to the diner. 

Slowly, Lance confessed, voice low, “Maybe you’d actually _ see _ me.”

He turned his head when he said it, focused on the tiny dots of headlights streaking outside, refusing to see how Keith took it. Lance imagined grimaces and sympathetic winces, apologetic shakes of his head. Let downs. The little ways people expressed their condolences before their words did. Reasons Lance kept all this as deeply buried as he could, for years and years and years.

Lance waited.

It never came.

What did was Keith’s soft touch against the back of his hand, his aching fingers unknowingly making their burden Lance’s once more. The pain throbbed along with his knocking heart, thrumming down to his fingertips.

Lance glanced back.

The jukebox changed songs. Following its wide, arching design, the LED lights flashed and blinked through a shifting spectrum of color. Fluid changes between red and pink and cyan blue--each of these inked Keith’s hair brand new, haloed the back of his head, trickled down to the highest points of his face. His ears, the left side of his cheek, tracing down his sharp jawline. Electric green, yellow, purple.

All these colors touching Keith where Lance wished he could.

Keith’s hand closed over his. Without prompting for it, Lance turned his over, their palms together, and Keith slipped his fingers in the spaces between.

“I always saw you, Lance.”

If words could punch, these threw their fists right into Lance’s gut. Each one swooped down below his stomach, filled him with a warmth that flooded his face and ears the same rosy cast. He drew in a shuddering breath.

“You--”

“Is there anything else I can help you boys with?” Their waitress picked that moment to come up. She had her hands hitched against her hips, her expression lofty. 

Her sudden appearance jolted their hands apart. Lance knocked his arm back too far; his elbow collided with his milkshake, sent the contents and glass to the table in a clatter. Both he and Keith stood up quickly, Lance pawing for napkins, Keith looking in the waitress’ direction with his mouth in a firm line.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, hold on--” Lance yanked what he could from the dispenser on the table, pressed wads of napkins to the mess, sopping up what he was able. He corrected the glass, set it up next to Keith’s untouched mug. His hands, for some reason, were shaking.

“Sweetheart, it’s alright, I’ll get it.” She didn’t move from where she was. Her eyes flicked between the two of them, and her narrowed stare made the back of Lance’s neck prickle.

He stopped, fingers sticky. “Oh,” he said dumbly.

Keith stepped away from the table, digging for his wallet. “Let’s go, Lance,” he said as he jerked a few small bills out. He tossed them to the table deliberately, where they sank in the spreading spill, and caught Lance’s arm, pulling him along. Stumbling, Lance followed, edging past the waitress, past the empty booths, and finally back out in the humid night.

The door snapped shut behind them.

The waitress didn’t tell them her usual goodbye.

“Oh,” Lance said again, this time to himself. 

Keith nudged him forward again, his hand slipping from his arm. “Don’t worry about it,” he tried. “Who cares what she thinks.”

Lance didn’t have to say it. It wasn’t just her--it was Indigo Pull as a whole. There were small veins of it always visible beneath the thin skin of tolerance. Acceptance didn’t bully one of his best friends until he was bruised and near-crying. It didn’t come in James Griffin getting off scot-free no matter who his father was. It didn’t react to the smallest displays of mutual affection with cold judgement.

It didn’t leave a corpse dumped on the outskirts of town, and a murder faceless, nameless, and free.

Lance shuffled forward, walking on autopilot. He was aware that they were moving, but not the direction they went. He could feel Keith’s eyes on him, the static between their swinging arms, the desire to touch again twitching in both their hands, felt now twice as strongly.

They reached a crossroads, a four-way stop almost half-way back to the McClain farm, before Keith stopped. Lance copied him, mind far away.

Here, under bowed willows and night sky, there was no one around, only the muted sounds of hunting owls or an occasional snickering bat wheeling overhead, darting around the streetlights dim circles of light. In this empty cross of payment, Keith grabbed Lance’s shoulders, and ducked down to fill Lance’s line of sight with the grayscale colors of his hair and skin and his dark eyes.

“Lance, hey.” His voice could’ve been the breeze, soft as it was.

Lance blinked and came back to himself, slowly, then all at once, like waking from a bad dream. The pressure of Keith hands steadied him, warm and solid, gripping him firmly. His chest pinched and twisted; his stomach knotted itself sick.

Lance shrugged him off. He took a step away instinctively. He didn’t see the way Keith’s jaw clenched--he _ felt _ it, another sickening punch of _ hurt _ that made Lance’s insides shake.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the apology out before he could bite it back. 

Keith shook his head. His shoulders tensed, his body language stiff and pivoted, that much more distance between them. “You don’t have to be.”

Lance wanted the road to split and swallow him alive.

“No--no, I do.” Lance let out an exasperated noise. His hands scored over his scalp. Tears--his or Keith’s, how could he possibly tell--prickled at his eyes. “I _ know _ I shouldn’t care! But--but with everything that’s happened, how can I _ not _ ? Why should it be my first impulse to move away from you when it’s someone else’s problem? Why. . .Why am I so scared of everything this means? That it _ is _?”

Keith continued to stare into the distance. His arms closed around his chest, squeezing himself tight. “I can’t answer that, Lance.”

“I don’t want you to!” Lance snapped at him. The heaviness in his chest expanded; his shining eyes puddled and filled, broke, tears rolling down his cheeks. “God_ damnit _.” He let the weight of it drag him down to the road, his hands rubbing harshly at his eyes, the tears that kept coming, his movements jerky and wild to mirror the ruin of his heartbeat.

And though he shouldn’t feel the need to--not after all that, not after everything--Keith came back to him, crouching where Lance kneeled, and gently coaxed his hands away. He clutched them tightly, fingers folding over his, in a way that was the same as before but _ more _, full of promise.

“I can’t answer you,” Keith told him again. “But we can figure it out together.”

Why did it take Lance so long to come to terms with his feelings? Why did it scare him at the same time it made everything settle and click into place? They were in the middle of the road on a late Saturday night, huddled together, their hands clasped between their bodies in the deep shadows they cast. Moths drifted lazily around any false moon they could find. Crickets crooned from the reeds. The wind kicked up from the east, soothed its caring fingers over the two of them, tossing Keith’s hair across Lance’s face. He could smell him, like pine and earth, like a garden before the bloom.

It made his chest ache with longing, though Keith was right here, right in front of him, _ always _ right in front of him. Lance lifted his eyes up, and Keith’s dipped down to meet his stare at the same time he let go of one of Lance’s hands.

The riddle of falling in love with someone was always a difficult one to solve. There were a thousand-thousand pieces to examine, run between your fingers, survey and place. Each look meant something, each brush of hair or tentative touch. Every word broke down to several new meanings depending on how you listened to them, on how they were said. There was the past of it, the present, the stretching future. A never ending investigation of _ why _ as you recognized every single _ how _.

Lance almost wished he had Veronica’s foresight or Rachel’s telepathy--it would have solved things so much faster.

In this swallowing night, Lance could only tilt up his face when Keith pressed his fingers to his jaw. The electric fire of Keith’s emotions--always shifting and changing, even harder to focus on right now--flowed into him, a mess of similar and opposite wants.

Lance understood what it meant the exact moment their lips touched.

He’d always imagined kissing to be fireworks and lights going off, bulbs flipped on, like a storefront but inside his body. But it wasn’t that. It crashed like a powerful current, a shuddering rush that clawed over him, pulled him up and down and back in again, his attention scattered, grasping on to every little thing. Keith’s lips moving against his own. The breath he took, shuddering, slow. His own heart, all tripping and beating drums. Shaking hands--his, Keith’s. The slow shift as their bodies craned forward and closer and touched.

Nearby, a car turned into a driveway, tries crunching gravel. The noise startled them apart, and Lance sucked in a breath.

“Oh, well, that was--yeah,” he stammered.

Keith laughed in that breathy way of his. It fanned over Lance’s face in their closeness, stirred the longer parts of his dark hair. “Does that answer a few things?”

Much more than that.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

Together they stood, their hands still clasped one in the other, both sets of knuckles an agony of old pain and new warmth. No one judged them for it. The owls and moths and trees couldn’t care less. The crickets trilled away. The wind touched them the same as it would anyone else standing where they stood.

It set Lance at ease.

Beside him, Keith’s shoulders eased up, tension spilling away.

“C’mon. Let’s go,” he said, turning to see Lance again. Keith slipped his hand from his; Lance immediately missed it, pain and all.

Lance thought of a better idea.

Punching Keith’s arm--it sent him staggering back, confusion blooming in them both--Lance darted ahead, sneakers beating the blacktop. “Race you!”

Behind him, Keith laughed, loud and true. “Seriously?”

He took off; Lance heard him coming, and the closer he came, the wider Lance smiled. He’d lose this race and the many to follow, but it didn’t bother him or sour the fun. The reward of seeing Keith heaving for breath beside him, bent-double, sweat kissed across his forehead, was worth it every single time. 

They tore through Indigo Pull like a storm. They were lightning and beating thunder, the heaving gusts of wild wind. Lance, with his head-start, stayed in front of Keith a little past Hunk’s. But after, and maybe it was Lance’s own fault for getting distracted looking for Hunk’s bedroom window--light on, partially open to let in the night air, like usual--Keith rushed by. The grin he shot over his shoulder could’ve sent Lance to his knees. 

From there, there was no way to catch up. Keith was way too fast--he ran like he never stopped.

Lance watched the back of his shirt the entire way home, the fluttering tail of his hair.

They reached the worn path to his porch faster than their idle walking left it, in just a handful of scattered minutes. Keith jogged himself to a stop right along the edge of light, leaning forward, hands on his knees, panting in the night air. Lance stumbled up beside him in no better condition. His chest clenched tight from breathing, his head swam dizzily from feeling Keith’s mirth as his own.

Keith glanced over. His voice came out ragged, throat raw from breathing hard. “Looks like it’s your loss.” 

Lance tried to tell him to screw off, that he was obviously way out of practice, but he never had the chance. He wasn’t sure what did it exactly, why, in that moment, Keith’s first impulse was to step into him and grab him by the shirt collar. But he did, and he jerked Lance forward again and kissed him for the second time.

It was better than the first.

The hot press of Keith’s mouth to his tore the air right through him. Lance started to sink to the ground only to have Keith hold him up, the two of them pressed to each other, chest against chest. One of them parted their lips; the other copied. Lance snatched his hands out to grab Keith’s wrists, swooning into him. He felt his pulse rage under his fingertips.

And, just like that, Lance was left standing by himself, warmth ripped away, head a mess of everything they both wanted. His heart pined. His stomach heaved and clenched, hollowed out. His skin burned where Keith had touched him. Where he had not.

Lance found his voice then, used it to find Keith in the dark, a few steps away, his back turned. “Why’d you do that,” he asked him, meaning the stopping part, not the kissing.

Keith flinched a little, like hearing Lance step forward startled him somehow. “Sorry.” More a breath than spoken. He didn’t turn around. In gloom, Lance watched him touch his fingers to his lips. “You. . .had this big, dumb grin on your face. And I. . .couldn’t help it."

Lance’s mouth gave in to another one, prompted by what he said. “I never thought _ you’d _be a romantic.”

“Shut up,” he murmured, as he let his hand fall back down. 

Lance watched him. Most of the emotions he felt vanished the moment Keith stepped back: Now he only had to deal with his own, and they were as big of a tangled mess as ever. In a good way.

He had no reason to worry, if he didn’t sense disgust or regret or anything close. For a moment, he knew how Keith felt, if he couldn’t have guessed by the way he’d grabbed him and kissed him like _ that _.

Joining him in the shadows, Lance reached forward and rubbed his hand up Keith’s back. The reaction was immediate--Keith melted into the touch, his muscles shuddering under Lance’s palm.

“You okay,” Lance asked him, and he dared to lean around, wanting most in that moment just to see his face.

Keith turned slightly, meeting him halfway. “Yeah.”

That goofy smile stretched across Lance’s face again.

“What about you?” Keith asked, and he turned so they faced one another. Their hands automatically sought each other out.

Alone, these small touches and exchanges were their own. Without the witnesses of Indigo Pull, any waitress or driver or passerby, these tiny things--the hand holding, the looks, each and every smile--was allowed to exist without judgement. Standing together outside his home, Lance felt more comfortable than he had all night, and thinking back to the diner, remembering the barely concealed sneer on the waitress’ face, seemed like a thing that’d happen days and days ago. Nothing to worry about. Nothing that could reach them now.

Lance’s shoulders lifted, fell. 

Indigo Pull would always be Indigo Pull. It would grow the same stories it always did, the soil too rich in its history to change. It would keep to the ritual of hating what it couldn’t understand. The Bible Belt would remain wound around their wrists, their throats, and they could either let it hold them back or struggle against it.

Lance intertwined their fingers. 

He wanted this, despite any consequences that came from it. He _ had _ wanted it, and those same fears were why he tried so hard to ignore everything he felt, and everything it wanted to become.

Until now.

Keith squeezed his hands, waiting patiently for him to talk, or giving him all the silence he needed.

“Yeah,” he told Keith and the moon and all Indigo Pull’s eavesdropping things. To _ himself _, now, because he was finally learning to listen. “Everything’s fine.”


	10. Chapter 10

September turned one day older, and Lance, in the bright sunny afternoon it gave him, stayed outside for most of it, drinking in the warmth. He laid flat on his back in one of the fields, the sour-sweet odor of fresh cut hay drifting lazily around him like the skittish mayflies. The sky held a faint peppering of wispy clouds against its glowing blue, a game of charades Lance played by himself, decoding the shapes they made.

He saw horses in one, a small clutch of thin-eared rabbits in another, a phantom moon that turned out to be the _ actual _ moon, caught behind the haze. 

Lance folded his fingers over his chest, and eventually, as the clouds blew away with the wind, he thought on other things. Things like dark hair and the exciting rush of a set of lips sliding against his own. His arms rose in goosebumps when he remembered the way Keith smelled, his masculine soap and his own skin, and shifted in the grass, his face warmed from more than sunlight. He wondered if Keith was thinking about similar things, or when he’d see him next.

With a sigh, he shut his eyes.

His brothers and father were further out on the farm, tending to the cows. His mother and sisters were inside the house, already fussing over supper. This was the first time in days Lance had the chance to be entirely alone, and he felt the difference like a dense blanket around his shoulders. 

Before, he hadn’t realized just how much he picked up on. Emotions that weren’t his own that he snatched and kept and sometimes mirrored. Out in the field with only his own feelings to process, nothing seemed too heavy to carry. The urge to cry, gone. His heart beat steadily--if not skipping from time to time, for a reason he was very aware of. 

It was _ nice._

And awful.

It made Lance feel incredibly lonely, for some reason, like he’d been removed from the close comfort of his friends and family and cast aside. He missed Hunk and Pidge, when just the other morning he’d been glad they left. He missed his family, though they were within reach, each of his siblings and his parents in places he could walk to and find. The only other person he wanted to see he saw just hours ago anyway, so to miss him already hit Lance like a shock.

Pushing back from the ground, Lance rocked into a sitting position, legs crossed, hands pressed against his knees, and sent a scowl to the far, lazy hills.

He wanted both, to have this quiet calm and to have everyone around him again, loud in only their voices and movements and love. His knees started bouncing, and almost comically, borrowing Hunk’s tone and habits, told himself to stop.

They say ‘speak of the devil’ when ironic things happen, like when someone shows up when you were just talking about them. ‘He shall appear’--something like that. Rachel liked to say it, smug and sure, but of course she would, because she’d know first out of any of them--except maybe Veronica, given the correct dream. 

So, ‘speak of the devil’ and, in this case, he’ll send the group chat a text that’d startle you half-to-death.

Lance jerked his phone from his pocket, the trilling sound clip dying the moment he had it in his hand. He popped open the message, and read Pidge’s all-caps screaming in mild surprise.

_ GUYS YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS WE NEED TO GET TOGETHER RIGHT NOW _

Lance frowned, and murmured out loud, “What?”

He text back the same thing. Hunk’s picture popped up right beneath, a line of question marks dotting the screen.

Pidge was quick to respond:

_ LANCE can we come over I found something out and I need you two to see it IMMEDIATELY. _

Like what? Lance’s thumbs hit the screen, punching out his reply:

_ Sure? But what’s up? _

Hunk sent a message that he never had the chance to read. The screen darkened suddenly, and Pidge’s icon filled the space. Lance’s phone started screaming out bells and alarms. Lance nearly dropped it to the grass, his arms jerking back at the loud noise.

He answered the video call after he took a steadying breath.

Glass-shine cut over the display, mirroring the small rectangle of Pidge’s own phone and the colors of his computer, the lime greens and blues, back at Lance to see.

“Hunk, I need you to pick up!” Pidge said, and noticing Lance then, he spun around in his computer chair, killing some of the noise dotting across his glasses. “Hey, Lance, sorry. It was taking too long to text back.” He frowned, hazel eyes darting, and cocked his head. “Where _ are _ you?”

Lance turned the phone around, making a small circle panorama of where he sat. There wasn’t much to it other than the shorn grass and dirt and the distant, crooked fence, hills and heavy, blue sky. He twisted the phone screen to face himself afterward, and this time saw Hunk beside Pidge, their faces split down the same shared screen.

“You’re outside,” Hunk asked, and that made his brow knit up for some reason. Without him close, Lance could only guess at why. 

Lance shrugged up his shoulders. “I didn’t have anything else to do,” he confessed. “So, what’s all this, Pidge? You found what, exactly?”

“Yeah, I’d also like to know why you’re freaking the heck out,” Hunk said.

Pidge dove into an explanation. “So, we all know now that Lance saw some sort of spirit here, right?” He didn’t pause for either of them to answer, though Hunk started sagely nodding his head. “Well, I started thinking about _ other _ ways to see if it’s still hanging around without bringing Lance back in. Sorry, Lance, I’d rather be safe about this than have to find you like that again. Don’t look at me like that.”

He wasn’t looking at anyone like that, thank you, but he waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. Go on. Get to the good part.”

“The _ good _ part is I rigged up some simple ghost-hunting tech last night with some things I had laying around. I even set out a camera in the kitchen but nothing really came out of that. _ But _\--”

Hunk cut in, voice raised, “_ But _?”

Pidge groped behind him for something on his desk. What it was, pixelated at the edges, half-blurred on the phone screen, was hard to say. Some sort of little, silver box? Lance squinted at it.

“_ But _ ,” Pidge repeated, shaking what was in his hand. “I left out a digital recorder on the table. You know, for EVPs. And _ there’s something on here _.”

Lance’s heart shot up into his throat. “What do you mean _ there’s something on there _,” he asked back, voice pitching up higher with every word.

Hunk’s face paled. His hand came up, fingers curled towards his mouth. He said something so softly the call didn’t pick it up.

“It’s hard to say. But it’s. . .it’s freaky, okay. That’s why I want us to get together so we can listen to it. Maybe it relates to what you saw in the kitchen?” Pidge set the recorder down. “Would you feel up for it?”

“I. . .I guess so?” He frowned, and brought up his hand, rubbing it over his face. “I don’t see why not.” 

“Great. Hunk? I’ll meet you at your house in about an hour,” Pidge asked, his eyes narrowed. “You haven’t even heard it yet! Stop freaking out!”

“You just told us you caught something on a recording that’s got _ you _ freaked out, how can I _ not _ be freaking out! You literally have an EVP? On that recorder? That you want us to _ listen to _?”

To be fair, Pidge seemed more excited than nervous. “Yes. Or, maybe. I'm still skeptical even with all this new evidence.”

‘Evidence’ meaning Lance in particular. His family, their ‘gifts’ that even Pidge’s logical-mindedness couldn’t debunk despite all his best efforts.

Hunk winced. “Okay, fine, but I'm making snacks when I come over. Also, I'm spending the night. No way I'm walking back home in the dark after this.”

“That’s a good idea,” Pidge agreed. “Do you care, Lance?”

He didn’t. In fact, the mention of it brightened his day a little bit more, despite the main reason they were coming out. He had news to tell them anyway, and this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

“Yeah, come on,” he told them both. “I'll go ahead and make us a pallet on the floor to sleep on. I have something I need to tell you guys anyway. Not--” he stressed, seeing Hunk open his mouth. “--anything bad. Just. . just life stuff.”

Hunk breathed out a small breath. He finally dropped his hand, stopped worrying down his already blunt nails. “Awesome. Okay. Great. Can we maybe watch a feel-good movie after too? This weekend has been literally the worst.”

Pidge’s agreeing laugh popped from the phone speaker.

Lance smiled, heart full. “You got it, buddy.”

_ ♰♰♰ _

Lance had put the final touches on their makeshift bed when Pidge and Hunk arrived, a little over an hour later, with the sunset chasing their backs. They came in, kicked off their shoes at the door, exchanged quick ‘hello’s to Lance’s family, then headed upstairs to set up shop. Well, _ Pidge _ set up shop, unpacking his laptop, the digital recorder, and the camera he mentioned before. Casting a wary glance at all this, Hunk plopped down in the center of the blankets and pillows, dufflebag discarded to the side, and set up nothing. 

He patted his large hands against the comforters, then his legs, then stopped to glance at Lance--perched like a bird on the sloping wood of the bed’s baseboard--his brow creased. “Can we make those snacks before we do anything? I need comfort food, man.”

Hunk asked Lance like he was sure, if given an open-ended question, Pidge would rule on the side of his excitement and tell them to wait.

In fact, Pidge looked up from what he was doing, laptop in his hands, his mouth opening to do just that.

Lance cut him off before he could get into it. “Trust me, he needs it,” he said, to quell whatever Pidge wanted to say. Their emotions rolled over him, and the odd mix of energy made him mirror both as an anxiousness he couldn’t shake. “And I do too.”

That was as good of a reason Pidge would accept. He lifted a narrow shoulder and turned back to his computer, booting it on. “I'll get everything ready, then. What are you making, by the way?”

Hunk sighed, relieved. “Rice Crispies but, like, with fruity pebbles instead. Or chocolate. I brought both.”

Lance watched Hunk pull two cereal boxes from his dufflebag. He was literally the best.

“Hell yeah, buddy, good call!” Lance pushed back from his bed and grabbed a box, picking the colorful one over the chocolate. “Let’s do these. Unless you have a preference, Pidgeon?”

Pidge eyed the two options. “Nah. That’s good.”

“Awesome.” Hunk reached into the bag again and pulled out a large bag of marshmallows, which Pidge held a hand out for immediately. Hunk ripped open the bag without being asked and passed a handful to each of them. “I'll have to borrow some butter. Mom caught me trying to sneak ours out and told me to put it back.”

“We literally make our own, dude, we have plenty.” He pointed this out as he popped a marshmallow between his lips, his thin brows arched up. “I could send some _ home _ with you.”

It was a joke, but Hunk’s face lit up. His emotions did, too.

“That would be amazing,” Hunk said, with absolute delight that Lance felt, a pleasant, spreading warmth cocooning his heart.

He couldn’t tell him ‘no’ after that.

They went back downstairs and whipped up what was probably the stickiest rice crispies that kitchen had ever seen. Hunk kept them there as long as possible, finding small things to do to prolong going back up to Lance’s room. His nervousness came back, and even if Lance didn’t recognize it in the air, Hunk’s fidgeting would’ve given it away in a heartbeat.

“It might be nothing,” Lance told him while they stood together at the sink. Their hands were thrust in hot water, their fingers working against the sugar-butter-cereal mixture glued to the sides of the pan and spatula they’d used. 

The kitchen smelled sweet and fruity. The sun went to bed with it, and night woke up around them, the sky outside the window velvet-dark. Lance unconsciously craned towards the window to look out, eyes trained upwards, looking for stars.

“I know. But Pidge wouldn’t be this amped if it wasn’t. I just. . .I don’t know, man, what if it’s _ bad _. Like, a demon or something?”

Lance glanced back at him. “It didn’t feel like that.”

“It made you black out, can you be sure,” Hunk asked back, his voice quiet, upset. Not because of a recording, whatever it may be, but for _ Lance _, all over again.

Lance bumped their elbows together. “Hey, don’t be like that. It’ll be okay. _ I’ll _ be okay,” he promised. Hunk frowned in a telling way, which Lance could only answer with a shrug. “What I felt at the Holt’s was _ scared _ , too. I don’t think a _ demon _ would feel like that. I know you heard what V said about it. It’s all just energy anyway. And I really don’t think it wants to hurt us.”

Hunk glanced at him. His hands fidgeted with the pot, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing. The warm water--a filthy soup of milky-white flecked with soggy, rainbow-colored bits--made small waves up his arms, streaking them with muck. Hunk didn’t seem to notice.

“Do you really think that,” he asked him, just between the two of them, voice deliberately low so it wouldn’t carry further into the house, where his family milled around, doing their own things. 

Without hesitation, Lance told him, “Yeah.”

And that was that.

Hunk carried the still-warm treats upstairs, Lance trailing behind, hands weighted down by soda cans and water bottles. They brought this small offering to themselves to Lance’s room, placed it in the center of the pallet, and chose their own seats around Pidge, who picked at the last of his marshmallow pile.

While they were gone, Pidge had taken the time to change into his pajamas, and sat comfortably propped back against the bed, hunched forward over his laptop out of habit. His shirt--bright green and too big--swamped around him, rippling out around his hips. His headphones were on, one ear uncovered so he’d know when they got back.

“Does it really take an hour to make rice crispies,” Pidge asked without looking up. His fingers danced on the keyboard. Doing what, Lance couldn’t guess.

“Absolutely, if you want them perfect. The key is to not overheat the marshmallows and butter or it’ll mostly end up coating the inside of the pan.” Hunk pointed to container he brought up--packed dense, carefully pre-cut in neat, even rows. “Plus, I'm not going to leave a mess for Lance’s mom. We had to clean up.”

Pidge hummed, only half-listening. His eyes narrowed, and his hands twitched across the keys, rhythmic and sure. “That’s fair. So, are we ready to get down to business? Because I have it all pulled up.”

He turned the laptop around, showing off his busywork. There were multiple programs pulled up, the main focal an editing software window, a sound clip waiting to be played. Pidge noticed their looks and shrugged. “I imported it earlier. While you were gone, I enhanced the audio and set it up to loop.”

Hunk frowned. “Can we eat these before we do anything?” he asked, nudging the pan towards Pidge as an incentive.

Pidge scowled right back. “_ Hunk _.”

“Okay, geez, fine, forget it. Play your ghost mumbo-jumbo then,” he muttered, scooping a square out for himself. Anxiety slid up Lance’s back, his own and borrowed.

Leaning forward, Lance took one too, tracing his fingers over the rough edges. “Go ahead, Pidge. We’re ready,” he said, sounding surer than he felt. 

Whatever Pidge found, he hoped it would help him remember what he’d seen in the kitchen. _ Had _ he seen more than just the set of legs walking around? Did he even look up? He couldn’t remember. Every time he thought on it, Lance felt sick and had to stop.

Turning the laptop around in his lap--unhooking his headphones in the process--Pidge turned the volume the highest it would go, then, with a glance to both of them, he tapped _ play _.

Static spilled from the speakers, hissing marred with sharp pops of feedback. Lance craned forward, eyes shut, trying to sort through the white noise for something hidden within. This went on for a few seconds, three or four, unbroken.

Then it stopped entirely. Dead stopped, like the recording was over.

Lance looked over at Pidge. Pidge looked right back, eyes wide behind his glasses.

Something broke through the silence, a stage-whisper, like someone was in the room, speaking right in their own ears

_M. . .sor. . .ry._

Unmistakable.

Hunk flinched back. He pressed his hands over his mouth. Lance rocked back, spine straight, his hands clutching his knees. They’d find the treats on the blanket later, dropped and forgotten in their collective shock.

“What the--” Pidge cut Lance off by shaking his head, and quickly, Lance swallowed it back, coming forward again, staring at the computer intently.

The static buzzed back to life.

But instead of the same three second clip, another noise bubbled up--a distant yowl shrieking from somewhere far off, muted by distance and quality. It kept going, whatever it was, screaming and screaming and suddenly--static again, a slight hiccup where the feed started to replay. Pidge hurried to pause it.

“That’s a cat,” he said, like it would suck the horror right out of the room. Hunk whined behind his hands, shaking his head, and Lance reached over, settling a calming hand on his arm. Pidge went on, “Or I _ think _ it’s a cat. There’s no other noise from it on the rest of the recording--I listened to the whole thing twice to make sure. No more voices either. Just. . . just that one.” Pidge set down his laptop and grabbed the camera, fidgeting with it, turning it on with a couple of quick presses of his thumbs. “I filmed the kitchen area last night for as long as my memory card allowed. I didn’t get anything. Nothing around the timestamp of the voice or the cat. No orbs or shadows or apparitions. I’m actually surprised we got what we did.”

Pidge glanced between the two of them. “Guys?”

Hunk sucked in a breath. He dropped his hands, and Lance noticed how they trembled like his voice. “Did something say _ I’m sorry _ ,” he asked the two of them, and they barely heard him. It was like he put himself on mute. “Right? It sounded like _ I’m sorry _.”

Lance frowned. Absently, he squeezed Hunk’s knee--giving him something else to focus on instead of his rising nerves. “That’s what I heard,” he admitted. “Which, yeah, no. I hate that. It fits to what I think I saw, what I _ felt _, but I hate it.”

“Me too,” Hunk muttered.

Unlike Pidge’s genuine wonder at the clip or Hunk’s downright apprehension, Lance found himself trying to piece together why a spirit would apologize in the first place. What was it sorry for? Lance had a funny feeling it was for _ him _ , like it knew why Pidge set out the recorder, and had made an effort to let Lance know it didn’t mean to scare him. To scare _ all _ of them. But could it be that self-aware? Could _ energy _, as Veronica called it, know what it had done? And was it still there? Or was this its final attempt to be noticed?

He’d have to go back to be sure. He didn’t say it, didn’t let the resolution show on his face--because to worry his friends was something Lance would always steer clear from. But just like the day he scaled Lion Castle’s hedges, he’d do the same to the Holt’s if he needed, to have these questions answered.

“But why leave in the other noise,” Lance had to ask. “That didn’t sound supernatural to me.”

Pidge snapped his fingers like he’d been waiting to be asked. “One, because it happened _ right after _ the voice. Right after. The timing of it felt. . .important. And second, I looked around my house for any signs of it and couldn’t find it.”

Which wasn’t surprising to hear. Indigo Pull had its own small share of strays, cats and dogs alike, poor, discarded pets that were left on backroads or abandoned in gas station parking lots. A few of the McClain barn cats were kittens Lance or Luis found and brought home, or suddenly arrived one day, drop-offs themselves.

“But,” Pidge started again, and Hunk groaned beside Lance like his heart couldn’t’ take much more of this. “I found blood.”

Hunk and Lance stared at him. There came a surging rush of sickness in Lance’s stomach that clawed its way up the back of his throat.

“What do you mean,” he asked, because, at that point, Hunk wouldn’t be able to speak if he’d wanted to. His shaking gave it away. The _ knowing _ of it poked against Lance’s awareness hot as fire embers. 

Something else came along with it: a jumbled, messy tangle of emotions that Lance picked up on but couldn’t process. There was too much, and too little, and with a start that sent him rocking forward, Lance pushed himself up from the pallet the moment before a rock struck his bedroom window.

Hunk screamed. Pidge lost his laptop to the blankets, his shoulders slamming back against the baseboard of the bed.

“What was _ that! _”

“No, no, no, I’m out, I’m done, I hate this, I’m out--”

Lance held his hand back at them, waving away their outbursts and their sour fear. “Guys, it’s alright--it’s Keith.”

Pidge’s voice didn’t lose its edge. “_ What! _”

Reaching out, Lance pulled back his curtains. Another stone soared at him in a well-aimed arc, striking the glass pane. Sure enough, down in the porch-light glow, small as a moth but poison-bright in his red jacket, stood Keith, arm bent, confessing his throw.

Lance eased up his window and leaned out into the cool evening. “We have a _ door _ , you know,” he called down to him. He couldn’t help the smile that followed. “It’s called _ knocking _. We have a doorbell, too, if you wanted to get fancy.”

Keith shrugged. Lance picked up on a soft amusement in his face, in the wild, shifting knot of his emotions. “It’s late,” he argued.

“So you thought scaring us half-to-death would be better?” Lance glanced back at Hunk, who shot him a bewildered stare. “Or maybe closer to a full-death.” He said it kindly, in a teasing way, and maybe that’s why Hunk eased up some.

Pidge did, too, after a moment, though he fell into his calculating ways, trying to piece together why Keith would be here, trying to get Lance’s attention. Nothing slipped by him, though, and Lance heard his accusatory, “_ Ohh _,” voiced at his back.

It warmed Lance’s face. He thanked the second-story distance. 

For his part, Keith cocked his head. He squinted up at him, at the window, like he was searching for something. “_ Us _,” he stressed.

“Yeah. Pidge and Hunk are here.” They slid up when he named them, filling the leftover space in the window, Hunk at his side, Pidge weasled in the gap near the sill, poking out his head.

Keith blinked at them. “Oh.”

Pidge grinned down at him. “Why are _ you _ here,” he said, with every possible meaning it could hold. 

Hunk looked over at him. It answered his own suspicions, like Keith being there so late wouldn’t anyway. He bumped Lance in the side. “So _ that _ was your news? Really?”

Really, really. Lance swatted them away, embarrassed. “C’mon, stop it.” To Keith, he said, pushing forward again, practically hanging out the window. “Do you want to come up? We were gonna watch movies.”

Keith hesitated. His eyes flicked between the three of them, settling, finally, on Lance. “Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt.”

Hunk gave a weak laugh. “Too late, man, you did that already.”

“Not that I think _ Lance _ minds,” Pidge said, with a grin that would make any gremlin proud.

Lance faced heated up even more. “I just decided I’m no longer friends with either of you. So, yeah, Keith, don’t worry about it.”

All three of them heard his small laugh from below. They watched him step forward, towards the house, boots crunching in the dirt. Keith stopped beneath them, head craned back to see them still, his hands reaching out, gripping the a/c unit. “Are you sure you don’t care,” he asked.

Lance blinked at him. “No, but what are you doing?” The thought struck him, and he barked out, “You’re not going to _ climb _ up here, are you?”

That was exactly it, if Keith snatching his hands back guiltily was anything to go off on. “No,” he said, a little _ too _ unconvincingly. “You. . .have a door.”

“Very astute of you,” Pidge chirped.

Lance pushed his head down out of view, ignoring the protests that followed. Pidge’s small hands came out, and like the pinchers they were, his fingers bit and pinched at him until he let him go. From the side, Hunk laughed at their antics--and maybe in relief that they no longer were on the topics they had been on: All the ghosts and cats and blood trails outside the Holt’s manor could wait. 

This was definitely a better alternative.

With Pidge free and popping back up in the same place he’d been, peeking over the edge of the sill, watching Keith like the others--and with Keith watching them back--Lance folded his arms and cocked a hip against the window frame.

“Hey, if you want to climb up here, I won’t stop you,” he told Keith down below. More amusement followed, unfurled like a wide-petaled flower, smooth as velvet in Lance’s recognition of it. It made the corners of his mouth twitch up, a smirk he didn’t feel the need to hide. 

Keith’s face mirrored his. Challenge accepted. A thrill shot up Lance’s back then down again, landing in a place that spread a fluttering, pleasant heat through his stomach and legs. He clutched his arms a little tighter, his breathing hitched.

It was the same as the night before, when they ran through Indigo Pull and Lance could tell Keith never stopped taking care of himself. He _ seemed _ thinner, sure, but his strength was just as wild and effortless, and when he pulled himself up on the air unit, boots drumming the dirty metal, it looked fluid and half-thought, easy. From there, Keith crouched and, with all the strength in his legs, leapt up, hands out.

His fingertips snagged the windowsill, and with a grunt, he pulled himself up, his face rising to meet three pairs of eyes. 

“You actually _ did _ it,” Pidge said, impressed.

Hunk rubbed at his face, shaking his head, waving Keith in. “Don’t just hang there, get in before you fall--”

Keith’s eyes were trained on Lance. They were closest, Keith’s hands an inch from where Lance’s legs were. If he uncurled them in the slightest way, they would touch. 

“Are you sure it’s okay,” he asked Lance again, voice lower, barely strained. Though he was holding all of his weight in his arms--something else Lance noticed in the tight way his muscles shifted and clenched--it didn’t look like it bothered him.

It took Lance a moment too long to process the question. Pidge shoved a bony elbow in his side and his ears burned pink once he came back to himself. “Ha--oh, uh, yeah, get in here,” he said, shuffling back, giving Keith some room. “You should probably hurry before Luis or Marco spot you.”

“True. They’ll yank you back down,” Pidge commented, nudging up his glasses. “Speaking from experience here.”

Keith heaved himself inside, swinging one leg in, then the other, hands keeping him steady until his boots hit the floor. He straightened after, reflexively popping his fingers, and reached behind him, politely closing the window. 

“Wait. Really,” he asked as he turned to face them. He squinted his eyes, glancing up at the overhead light, like it was too bright for him to stand. 

“Yeah, really,” Lance told him. “Pidge screamed so loud we all got grounded for it. Luis was pissed.”

Keith’s eyes swept from his stripped bed to Pidge’s doodles pinned to the walls. An unfortunately shaped bowl Hunk made in art class sat on his desk, full of junk--candy wrappers, keys, his wallet, every pen he’d ever borrowed. Homework piled next to that, unfinished. The teddy bear he’d had since childhood sat proudly on his nightstand, missing an eye and showing off a limb stolen from another toy, haphazardly stitched into place. There were dirty clothes thrown in one distant corner, beside a hamper. Lance’s private galaxy pressed into the ceiling, translucent green against the white. Little things. _ His _ things. Things that hung like an embarrassing sign around Lance’s throat.

Lance swallowed.

Keith held a soft smile in every curve of his mouth. “Sounds like something Shiro would do.”

“No way,” Hunk laughed. “I’m not buying it. He’s too nice.”

Pidge hummed. He was the first to walk back to the pallet, the first to reclaim his spot by the bed. “You’ve never seen him play chess. He’s relentless if he wants to win.”

“Or prove a point,” Keith added. He stepped a little hesitantly forward, then stopped, glancing down at his shoes. Everyone else wore their socks or, in Lance’s case, was entirely barefooted. After a second, some inward debate, he yanked off his boots.

Which meant he was going to stay for a while, if Lance had to guess, suddenly a little more nervous. He watched Keith pull one boot off then the other, the laces still knotted, bows lopsided. Keith placed them under the window--and, almost begrudgingly, his jacket too, loosely folded. 

It didn’t go unnoticed that he was wearing the same things from the night before, the dark shirt, the same black jeans. Lance’s heart gave an odd pull, almost pinched in his chest. Didn’t he have any other clothes? 

Lance was starting to think not.

And it was the reason he blurted out, “Do you want to borrow some pajamas?” without realizing how it must sound.

Everyone in the room looked at him. Pidge’s hazel eyes were examining, Hunk’s honey-brown kind in understanding. And Keith--Keith looked surprised and maybe embarrassed. Lance could feel another shift, the slight hiccup of something, but unlike with Hunk or Pidge, he couldn’t place his finger on it exactly. It _ felt _ like shame, deeply muted, the impression a flush or the prickling up the back of his neck.

So to take his mind off it, to cover the real reason he’d asked, Lance said, “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I like to be _ comfortable _ during movie marathons. And jeans aren’t comfortable.” He said it in an airy, teasing way, and walked as he did, stepping over to his closet.

“I think we wear the same size,” Lance went on, talking through the uncertainty. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. All he could do now was make it better and hope it didn’t make it _ worse _. He started digging around for something to lend Keith.

Keith shuffled behind him. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

He picked out a pair of bigger pajama bottoms--probably once Luis’--and a shirt that he knew was just a touch too loose across the chest, and brought them over to Keith, holding them out. 

Keith accepted them, frowning down at their hands. “Oh, I thought they’d be more. . .”

He didn’t finish. He gestured at Lance’s outfit, an odd assortment of his own and stolen clothes. The bottoms were his, a soft blue plaid, and the sweater one of Rachel’s, a little tight and warm. The sleeves didn’t quite make it down his long arms; they cut off above his wrists. Lance laughed.

“This? Nah. This is a perk of having four older siblings. I stole this from Rach,” he admitted proudly. “I liked that it said ‘Desert Vibes’. Like, what does that even mean?”

From his seat on the blankets, mouth full of the treats they made, Hunk supplied, “Cacti, plateaus, dry heat.”

“Red dust, tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes, cow skulls in the middle of nowhere,” Pidge listed, ticking them off on his fingers.

Keith smiled, eyes trained on the clothes he held. “Hot days, cold nights, clear skies.”

Lance glanced between the three of them, from Pidge hunched over his computer, to Hunk dusting the crumbs off the blankets, and back to Keith, standing close, his thumbs soothing over the soft fabric of the t-shirt. And, really, it shouldn’t have made him that happy, just having them all there with him, giving him silly answers to his silly question. But it did. It filled him to the brim all over again, and he wondered, not for the first time, if this feeling was his alone.

He laughed at what they said--they weren’t wrong, none of them--and shook his head at the soft whimsy of it all.

“I’ll show you where the bathroom is,” Lance told Keith, and without a lick of shame, he caught his wrist in his hand and gently pulled him along.

Keith would’ve followed without protest, as he did now, whether he held his hand or not.

His bedroom was at the end of one narrow hall. A little further down, two doors faced each other--Veronica’s room on the right, Luis’ on the left, as it’d always been. A dusting of family portraits outlining the growth of every McClain child hung on the walls in a careful pattern. Lance saw his own face, from adolescence to now, smiling his same, wide smile. The smile that Keith commented on last night. The one that made him jerk him forward and kiss him a second time.

Lance chanced a glance back at him.

With a soft expression--Keith’s eyes alight, his mouth the closest to smiling it could be without--Lance caught him examining the pictures as they walked past them.

“Mom likes to show them off,” he said, playfully grimacing at one of his past school pictures. They were as bad as some of Marco’s, his haircut new and glaringly ridiculous in hindsight. “I don’t know why. Half of them turned out awful.”

Keith breathed a laugh through his nose. “Half?”

Lance’s laughter wasn’t so discreet. “Don’t call me out. Okay, so _ all _ of them are pretty bad. That’s, like, the point of school pictures. Get all fussed up before school then have the most awful picture taken of you in your entire life.” He pointed to one of Rachel, her face contorted, pre-sneeze. “I secretly think that’s the point of them.”

“What? To be bad?”

“Well, yeah, can you explain this?” Lance pointed to one of Luis. The one thing that stood out was the disarray of his hair, the knots and tangles and gravity-defying way it poked out in all directions. Lance knew the story of it, how his mom had used too much hair gel to keep it tame and how Luis’ fidgeting hands undid every minute of work that went into it. It was relic before his time, so Lance couldn’t say if the rest of what he’d been told held much truth. His mom wasn’t the type to anger easily, or at all, and he couldn’t imagine her upset over something like this, especially now when she held nothing but a mother’s full love and fondness for these awful, silly pictures of her children.

They _ were _ bad. But, if you looked as Lance knew how to look, as his _ mamá _ surely did, or his _ papá _ with his quiet amusement, their attempts to have these pictures be worth the price and effort showed in each and every one.

Lance told Keith he didn’t know why they lined the walls as they did, each in their own frame, five timelines affixed to the walls. Marco’s and Luis’ from preschool to the days they graduated high school. Veronica’s ended with her earning an associate’s degree at a technical college a town over--with space left to fill once she completed more her Bachelor’s. Rachel’s stopped after the ninth grade, where, and she told this Lance herself, she didn’t find the point of having her picture taken anyway, if they were just going to turn out bad. Fill-ins had been made at the McClain’s home instead, so her timeline continued as her siblings, just in backdrops of the kitchen or sunset-dark front porch. And this was where Lance found his answer: His mother painted this hallway with these photos, paid for large packets of them every year to show off how the five of them had grown.

Presently, Keith shook his head. He had taken the time to look at all the pictures as they passed them, jumping from Veronica’s to Rachel’s to his brothers’ and his. “I can’t,” he said, answering the question Lance almost forgot he asked.

He rewarded Keith with a gentle laugh, and showed him the door to the bathroom, the one directly after the gallery of photographs. “My point. I bet yours turned out just as bad,” he commented lightly.

Keith stopped at the threshold, his fingers tightening slightly around the bundle of clothes. “No, they didn’t,” he said softly, making a face right after, like saying it had been a mistake.

It only worsened, that pained twist to his mouth, when Lance asked, “They didn’t?”

Keith was honest with him. He said, “Dad couldn’t afford them. I never had them done.”

Lance only replied with a soft ‘oh’. Anything else would be prying or might come off insensitively. The McClain’s weren’t rich or well-off (it was nearly impossible supporting five kids) but their wealth showed in places like the wall behind them, heavy with the priceless, bottomless well of love that Lance always had growing up.

Standing together in the hall, Lance hurting because Keith was, because he’d accidentally asked into places still dark and tender, he tried to make it better by reaching out, his hands laying over Keith’s. 

The unexpected touch startled him, but it also chased away some of the melancholy. Keith actually looked up at him again, their eyes meeting in the slant of light spilling into the hallway from the overhead bathroom light.

An apology rolled off Lance’s tongue, entirely heartfelt and meant.

Keith turned one of his hands to squeeze Lance’s in unspoken forgiveness.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, jerking his chin towards the bathroom.

Lance dropped his hand and grinned at him, shooting him a playful set of finger guns as he backed away down the hall. “I’ll be waiting--ah--” He stopped. “Well, I was going to say ‘I’ll be waiting for you in my room’ but that sounds a little. . .” Lance wiggled a hand. “Y’know.”

Keith blinked at him, almost smiling. “Yeah,” he agreed, sounding more amused by it than anything else. To spare him from making a bigger fool of himself, Keith slipped into the bathroom and shut the door, the gentle touch of his emotions following Lance back to his room.

Pidge and Hunk were on him like vultures when he stepped in alone.

“When were you going to tell us _ that _ was a thing,” Pidge hissed, not unkindly, hand flapping at the closed door.

Lance groaned. “I didn’t think he’d show up! I was going to tell you two after you played your ghost stuff,” he admitted. He went to the pallet and plopped down beside Hunk again, redder in the face than he had been.

“I want details,” Hunk nosed in, hands clapping. “When did this suddenly happen?”

There wasn’t any reason to beat around the bush. Lance kept it concise, in case Keith changed quick, “Last night.”

The two of them leaned forward, waiting for the rest of it. Lance waved them off, a little flustered, a little excited because he had the whole story of it to tell. The date. The run through Indigo Pull. The two times they met and kissed.

But now wasn’t the time.

“Keith’s here, can it wait?” Lance watched Hunk sit back, a little disappointed. He patted his leg. “I promise I’ll tell you two everything. Just. . .it would be weird, you know, if he walked in on me talking about it.”

Hunk shrugged his shoulders. “That’s fair. Rain check."

Pidge sighed and shifted his laptop, looking down at the screen. He flipped through several different screens--clicking, clicking, clicking, falling into his fidgeting--the reflection through his glasses giving him away. 

In a huff, Pidge told him, “_ Fine _,” as the bedroom door opened and a slightly-brighter shadow slipped inside, hunched and self-conscious like it was his first time wearing blue.

Lance turned to Keith when he stepped in, hands up, beckoning him forward. “Hey! They fit, that’s great,” he said. “Pick a spot, and we can get this movie marathon started!”

He kept his voice pitched as close to his normal, chipper tone as he could. If it fell flat, the other three didn’t confess it in their faces or their emotions, and Lance almost breathed out a sigh of relief. 

Keith picked a spot by Lance, naturally, sitting down deliberately close, their hips touching, knees pressed together. He set his clothes aside, tossed them back towards the wall with his other things, and murmured something low, another ‘thanks’ or close enough to it that Lance could automatically smile in response.

But he wasn’t focused on that, or on Hunk pulling up the first of the many movies he fished from his bag.

Though Pidge kept his chin down, his knees up, and his laptop pulled close, Lance watched him out of anyone else, his own heart heavy with the sudden, unexpected plummet of feeling Pidge’s apprehension as his own.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Keith couldn’t remember the last time he watched movies until the sun came up, or was even invited over for a sleepover, a slumber party--_ whatever _ this technically was. Even though he’d showed up unannounced, the three of them immediately accepted that he was part of this pre-planned thing. Hunk let him pick out his favorite movie from the ones he brought (which, honestly, Keith just chose one at random) and offered him as many marshmallows or cereal treats he could eat. Whenever Pidge got up to raid the McClain’s kitchen for more drinks, he made sure to ask Keith what he’d like. Lance stole another blanket and pillow for him to use from one of his brothers’ rooms. Though, really, he didn’t need to. At a point, halfway through the night, they started sharing the same blanket anyway.

The thought was nice, though. 

They were laying beneath it now, Lance curled on his side facing him, his long legs tucked up almost to his chest. His hands were a bit of everywhere: One carelessly thrown over his eyes, the other stretched out in the small distance between them like he knew, even while asleep, that Keith was about to get up and leave.

It was what kept him there longer than he wanted, that tiny, insignificant thing. If he’d been more sure of himself, of this new, tentative thing between them, Keith would’ve grabbed his hand and held it for the several minutes he lay there, watching Lance sleep. He wanted to, and that wanting burned him alive, twitched through his hands, tripped up his heart.

Keith didn’t want a lot of things, but a lot of the things he _ did _ want were in this room, sleeping gently, turning the shifting colors of a purple-blue-pink sunrise.

He gave himself one more minute to listen to the music of a room full of people--his _ friends _\--breathing and sleeping and dreaming.

Then, wearing Lance’s borrowed clothes, his own tucked under his arm, Keith slipped out of the window and into the new, waking day before he could be missed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to warn you now--the soft stuff is where my heart lies. Do I want the fluff? The answer is always yes. Please get ready to TUCK IN LADS!!
> 
> It still boggles me how long I've been writing this fanfiction and I'm still not done. Haha, I hope you guys are here for the long (and good) time!
> 
> The art was done by BobtheAcorn for Christmas for me last year!!! Blows my MIND how much everyone is liking this story so far! For over a year and a half, I pretty much wrote this for myself and for her. But all this support has been amazing. Thank you all for reading this and sticking with it!! If anyone wants to know, I'm working on chapter 29 right now! And I'm just as excited over it as ever!
> 
> Anyway, I'll hush. Sorry for the long note, ha!


	11. Chapter 11

October burned through the valley in oranges and reds, the oaks and maples and elms shuddering into new coats of bright fall color. Indigo Pull, its rolling hills and forest pockets, took on the costume of a wild fire--the hints of woodsmoke haunting the air from family bonfires or clearing fields helped cement this impression. The early mornings often gave the gift of heavy, creeping fogs slipping up from the river; the nights would fall clear and crisp, cool as the promise of dew crusting into frost before the sun rose once again. 

As September fell away, sending off the final dregs of August’s lingering summer heat with it, several things took place in that short span of three weeks, pulling the days and nights into long, almost endless cycles.

The morning after the sleepover, when Lance woke up expecting to see Keith there and didn’t, the others got ready for school and left the McClain house. Pidge and Hunk were unusually quiet, and this pressed against Lance in various ways, mostly in the sinking, itching sensation of their combined concern for him crawling under his own skin. 

They had the right to worry: Lance didn’t make it half-way through his first class before the noise of hundreds of people flooded into him, and he collapsed.

He woke up to Pidge and Hunk and Allura crowded around him in the nurse’s office, their worry thick in the air. Later, he’d ask how Pidge knew anything had happened at all, to which Hunk firmly told him, “I went and got him, obviously.” And to be fair, Lance should’ve guessed that. 

Allura was a surprise, but, after hearing how she was the one that caught him before he swooned out of his desk, it made more sense why she joined the others around the bedside. It was the first time Lance felt the press of her emotions--intentional and sharp, like a sure cut from a cold knife. It was everything Keith’s was not, and distant enough that Pidge and Hunk’s slid over hers louder, more demanding, pulling his attention back to them when he started to get overwhelmed again.

Despite every one of his protests, Lance’s dad showed up ten minutes later in the rickety, coughing farm truck to take him back home. 

Lance held onto a massive headache the entire drive back, and even his mother’s fretting hands couldn’t heal it completely.

That night, without prompting for it, Rachel came to his room with a look blended of part annoyance and part determination. She fell back on his bed where he’d been resting, and yanked his pillow out from under his head to prevent him from falling asleep. 

“Alright, get up,” she said, ignoring Lance’s rising protests. She tossed the pillow halfway across the room the second he sat up to take it back. “Class is in session.”

Lance looked at her like she was speaking fluent Greek. “What are you even  _ talking _ about,” he bit, worn and tired and absolutely done.

Out of all the McClain children, his mother or his  _ abuela _ , Rachel’s gift was closest aligned to his. She told him that, and at his dumbfounded look, she clarified, “You think I had it easy when my gift developed? Uh, no. Same thing happened to me. We’re  _ Readers _ , Lance. I read thoughts and you read emotions. So, I’m gonna try to give you some pointers because seriously? This trying to feel everything at once and passing out from it is getting kind of lame.”

She meant it and said it in a gentle, caring way she rarely showed, and he didn’t even have to say anything in his defense--she heard it, the thought of it, and nudged him away, batting aside all his questions and his protests with a simple flip of her hand. 

“Shut up and listen for once--with your ears, nothing else,” she instructed, and that was that.

From then on, Rachel and Lance got together once a day to practice. And, honestly? It was hard work. Harder than Lance thought was actually fair. It wasn’t exactly like he  _ wanted _ this gift and all its uses and complications. He didn’t ask for it. He didn’t like being singled out, off-colored from the rest of his family and his friends. It was something that, however subtly, stationed him a little on the outside, had him firmly stuck between his two, overlapping worlds.

Rachel’s ideas, her experiences borrowed for the sake of Lance learning from them, started to take root, and Lance missed school less and less the more confident and practiced he became. Some days were worse, some people too loud to block out, and in those moments, Lance latched onto the steady rock of Hunk’s emotions or Pidge’s carefully aligned ones until the noise of everything else died away. It was something Rachel confessed she had to do when her gifts suddenly developed when she was eleven.

“It sucked,” she bitched one night, while the two of them were piled up in her bedroom. “But at least I had Veronica around. I tapped into her head so much  _ I  _ started having her weird prophecy dreams.”

She sat at her vanity, face leaned in towards the glass, carelessly applying coat after coat of mascara to her already-dark lashes. Red lipstick stained her mouth; her eyes shimmered the same shade of goldfish scales. Lance watched her from his perch on her bed, and again, he wore her clothes just as she wore a borrowed pair of Veronica’s heels and had knotted one of Marco’s old flannels around her waist. The McClain children shared everything. Items of clothing, pillows, blankets, shoes, advice, beds, money--everything in the house exchanged hands so many times that nothing really belonged to a single person anymore.

It was all  _ theirs _ .

They loved one another so deeply and honestly that it was only natural.

Dusting the black flecks from her cheeks, Rachel continued, Lance leaning forward slightly to show he was paying attention (though she could tell better than most if he was or wasn’t): 

“Yeah, you heard me right. I was eleven. It happens different for everyone, I guess, depending on a lot of things--I mean, who can say? We only sort’ve understand it ourselves. V developed hers around the same time, like, after her twelfth birthday, I think, when she had her first period.” 

Lance didn’t even bat an eye. He gently pressed his fingers to his own chest, Rachel’s sweater slipping up his long torso as he moved. It was a dusty navy freckled with golden stars, and he loved it the first moment he saw it. “Does that make me. . . I don’t know. A late bloomer? Or, you know. . .” 

Seventeen seemed pretty far away from eleven or twelve. 

Rachel knew what he was really asking.

She looked at him through the mirror, and then turned at the twisted expression on his face. The closed tube of mascara she held found its way from her hand to his shoulder, sure as an arrow.

It bounced to the floor.

“Hey!”

“Lance, I'm only going to tell you once,” she spoke over him, in a serious tone she seldom used. She sounded like Veronica. “One, don’t compare me to her. And two, you aren’t a freak, okay? You aren’t stupid for not having this whole thing figured out. I had headaches for years once I got my gift. _Years_. Did you know that V stopped sleeping after her first dream came true? She forced herself to stay up for three days straight, until she got sick and collapsed. Even talking to _Mamá_ didn’t help. She _still_ hates to sleep sometimes, because of what she might see.

“So don’t be like that. I know how you feel--trust me, I hear you loud and clear--but you’re not weird or strange or anything like that. Remember what we told you? Boys don’t generally develop gifts. It makes sense it took yours a little while to finally show up. Plus--” She snapped out her hand towards him, shushing him when he didn’t even know he was about to speak. “--I think you had it a lot longer than you think. You just did that thing you do and tried to ignore it.”

Lance bristled up for an argument.

Rachel smiled in her (annoyingly) knowing way. “Just saying. You used to cry whenever we did. Didn’t matter why. When Luis fell off his bike that one time, do you remember? When his knee was all cut up and he tore his elbows pretty bad?”

Lance nodded. The images of bright blood rolling down tanned arms popped into his head, the echo of a yell--the tight burning at the back of his own throat. It’d been summer then, humidity thick, the dirt paths around the farm baking hot. July at its zenith. 

“Yeah. He needed stitches.”

“Exactly. He was the one in pain, and there you were: an ugly, sobbing mess. Dad thought you did something, but you were upset  _ because _ Luis was. It was the first time mom had a suspicion.” 

There were more times than that. More than what Rachel rattled off as she spun back around in her seat to finish her makeup. More than Lance could recall, as he sat there, half-watching her, only half-listening, trying to dissect every little thing about himself, from childhood until now. It spread out like a mystery--what he remembered didn’t stick out as supernatural, just Lance’s own, full heart trying to shoulder everything for everyone so they would have it a little easier. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d been sensing these things since he was a kid too.

There wasn’t any way to possibly tell.

Over the three weeks between September’s end and October’s beginning, thanks to Rachel’s lessons, Lance learned the delicate way to unknot Keith’s emotions. Little by little, the more time Lance spent with him, the tangle began to smooth out, separate. It still wasn’t as easy as with his friends or his family, but it was progress, and Lance took any small form of that as a personal victory.

Keith liked to sneak over late at night and it became a sort of ritual that he would slip through Lance’s window as he did the first time, quiet and quick, jumping from the air unit with the ease of practice. Together, and almost giddily on Lance’s part, they would stretch out on Lance’s bed, shoulder-to-shoulder, and spend the night talking.

Sometimes they would kiss again, watched over by the careful constellations above, and sometimes they would just sleep, comforted by being near one another.

Neither of them were impatient to rush it further--here, like this, the two of them were happy. Lance practically beamed it each time he heard a knock on his window. And Keith, as Lance combed through the messy twist of his constantly shifting emotions, felt the same way whenever he saw Lance’s face appear from behind the pulled curtains. 

This night was just another night: chilly and cloudless, the moon fat and round, weighing down the sky. Keith rose with it, creeping away from Shiro and the Holt estate like a ghost finally free to roam. He climbed up to the window under Lance’s watchful eye, and was rewarded the moment he was near enough to touch.

Holding out his hands, before Keith could crawl into the room, Lance caught his face between his palms and leaned in, pressing their lips together. Keith’s hands closed over the windowsill, his feet braced against the side of the house for balance, and leaned in as far as he could towards Lance while hanging outside, expectant and wanting and caught.

They parted laughing.

Lance, a little pink in the face, stepped back and Keith filled up the spot, both physically and in a way only Lance noticed. 

“That was some ‘hey’,” Keith remarked, hands finding the soft dips right above Lance’s hips.

Behind him, the blue curtains twirled and danced, the breeze bellowing them out, making them breathe. The chill of it, the smoky perfume that filled the room, their nearness, the heat of Keith’s hands seeping through his shirt. . .it all pressed and pushed and pulled against Lance as he stood there, smiling wide, fighting some hopeless battle at keeping himself together.

“Are you saying you didn’t like it? Because I’m always open to constructive criticism.”

Even the dark couldn’t take away the thrill of seeing Keith’s sudden smile.

It struck Lance right below his navel. His skin crawled with a wash of goosebumps.

Keith ducked in, closer, brave and bold and so sure of what he wanted that Lance could barely stand there and feel the same emotion twice. His legs actually started shaking. His hands tangled themselves in Keith’s red leather jacket, fingers twisting tight to keep Keith from moving away.

“I might have some suggestions,” Keith said, voice pitched low, a rumble, a secret in the nighttime hush. 

Lance wanted to know what they were. 

He wanted a lot, so much it almost hurt not to have them, any of them. His stomach clenched, his throat went tight. Some unknown thing clawed inside of him, heaving, burning,  _ demanding _ . And he wanted--he wanted--he  _ needed _ \--

No. 

_ Keith _ wanted.  _ Keith _ needed. Not him, not Lance.

It was harder to pull himself away from it all, leave it for Keith to feel and deal with on his own, whatever it was. Lance didn’t have a name for it, but he thought it had something to do with how they were standing, how Keith’s eyes were turned down to look at him, his lashes sweeping across the tips of his cheekbones each time he blinked. How they touched and how they didn’t. How Keith’s lips were parted, like he planned to kiss him again.

The closest thing Lance could compare it to was  _ hunger _ .

Carefully, grounding himself, Lance placed his hands over Keith’s where they sat at his hips. At some point--and Lance tried to recall exactly  _ when _ \--Keith had slipped the very tips of his fingers beneath his shirt, barely,  _ barely _ resting his fingertips against his skin. Ten little pinpricks of heat Lance unconsciously focused on.

He wondered how it would feel if Keith dared to slide his entire hand up under his shirt, how the flat of his palm would coast up his back, his sides, over the dome of his chest. His stomach.  _ Lower _ .

Swallowing hard, Lance broke away first, peeling Keith’s hands away, huffing out a shaking breath.

Keith watched him, confusion on his face and nudging against Lance’s open study of him. The other things were there too, just as powerful, those desires laid out, unmasked, exposed. They poked and they prodded and they demanded, and it took Lance a full minute to recognize Keith had asked him a question above the din they made.

“What? Sorry. What did you say?”

Just a little, the fire of his wanting edged away. Lance breathed a little easier, though his hands shook, his mouth went dry. Even the way Keith watched him like  _ that _ , his eyes plum-dark and so  _ beautiful _ , took Lance’s breath away.

“I asked if you were alright,” Keith repeated. He stood apart from him, composed, arms hanging deliberately at his sides. He didn’t want them to be. Lance knew that just by looking at him, not to mention the way it snagged his attention, a hook pulling him forward, the one, two, three steps.

Keith grabbed him by the elbows when he swooned into him. Lance only wanted another kiss--and he got it, the soft, sweet kind that he liked more than all the others.

The rest he blocked out, using what Rachel taught him over the weeks to turn his attention inward instead of outward. All the rushing static of Keith’s emotions went dead, radio silence.

“Totally. Yeah. Sorry,” Lance murmured again. “I might be a bit distracted.”

This made Keith laugh, a huff that tickled across Lance’s cheeks. “I can tell. I guess I should wear this jacket more often.”

Since he mentioned it, Lance touched his hands to the jacket again, fingering over the silver zippers and buttons, the stitching holding it all together. It was soft and well-worn, like the cover of a beloved book or like the faded, creased leather of Keith’s boots. An old thing. A precious part of him.

Lance grinned. “Or just come over more often. Same thing really.” 

“Do you want me to,” Keith asked. He gave in and folded his arms around Lance’s middle, hands carefully pressing Lance’s lower back, flat and modestly placed. His cheek found the top of his hair; Lance took it as an invitation to lean his whole body against his, his face buried in the crook of his neck. 

He smelled like the night, earthy, fall leaves and woodsmoke, the change of one season into another.

Lance hummed in response. “You already know the answer to that.”

It went without saying--but the way they had come together like this, tucked in each others’ arms, October chill spilling over them from the open window, said more than they possibly could with their murmured confessions.

Two sets of stars glittered above them, green and gold, all sparkling and held together by coupling constellations Lance could name by heart. How long they stood there slipped them both by. It was a comfort neither wanted to forfeit, a small thing they’d both wanted and craved since the last time Keith visited, a few days before, another night he stole away for Lance’s safe keeping.

This ritual, out of all the others Lance, was his favorite.

Head turned, cheek against Keith’s gentle pulse, he studied the skyline and the loving way Keith’s shoulders dipped. Lance knew it more then than he had before, how much this boy meant to him and the scary thing it would eventually become. He’d toyed with the thought of love since the first night they kissed and then every night after, when his heart would kick up in his chest at the sight of Keith standing below his window, waiting for him to let him in.

It’s always the small things that added up first. The quiet midnight conversations. The walks by the riverside, creeping like racoons over the pebbled bank, chasing starlight and streetlight and moonlight glow, trying to keep their laughter down like they were afraid to rouse the sleeping cicadas. It was the hand-holding in the open air of three a.m., fingers netted, Keith’s thumb brushing over his knuckles in the perfect way to distract Lance all over again. It’s every moment like this, embracing and embraced, staring out into the night, Keith’s heart a steady, slow rhythm in his ear. 

The first year they ran track together, Lance tried over and over to be noticed. He ran for hours every day at practice, on the way home, around the network of worn paths mapping the McClain farm. He knew every road backwards and forwards and could run them with his hands pressed over his eyes. He  _ still _ could. The months beat his feet bloody, cracked and split his soles into tougher callouses. His legs burned and ached through the night, the day, running or standing still. All his heaving breathing left his throat raw and his chest pinched. It wasn’t enough. Keith blazed past him, perfected his times, crossed each and every finish line seconds before Lance caught up. 

And what was worse: Keith never looked back.

The second year started out the same. But Lance didn’t know what ‘giving up’ meant. He tried harder. He wore down pair after pair of shoes, tore through laces, frayed holes in every pair of his socks. Marco gave him all the spares he had, new or old, (dress or crew or no-show) and it still couldn’t keep up with him. Luis spent his own money on shoes, store- or thrift-bought, for Lance to ruin. There were days Veronica would have to bring him dinner out on the porch steps because Lance’s legs refused to work, the fatigue buckling his knees every time he tried to get up. Rachel would leer at him for his stubbornness, but she would help their mother rub cooling lotion on his calves to ease away their awful hurting. Their  _ Papá  _ taught him that Crisco, when applied every night, would keep his feet soft and stop their painful splitting. 

He got better. And it paid off. The first day he beat Keith, soared past him, left Lance light-headed with victory.

It wasn't the first time they talked, but it was the first time Keith congratulated him with a, “Great race.”

It was the first time Lance's heart tripped over itself. He still remembered the cool spring dew soaking through his sneakers, his socks, the sweat dripping down his back. An early morning meet, a warm-up race around the school's private racing track. Lance'd beat him at dawn, and saw Keith clutching his knees beside him as the sun painted the orange-gold of a rising morning across his shoulders.

He'd been even more beautiful then, with his face sunkissed and bright. In this memory, Texas Kogane still had three months left to live, and Keith was just as far away from his self-destruction.

Lance squeezed his arms tighter around this boy, like he could crush all the bad feeling out of him. If he opened up a little, Lance could feel it, an undertow of constant grief, solid and ridged as a second backbone.

“What is it,” Keith said into his hair.

Lance shook his head, breaking the connection before he did anything stupid. He let go of Keith's jacket and stepped back, unaware of the shine of his eyes or his quivering lower lip.

Keith took it all in. He cupped Lance's face between his hands. He was close in a second, their foreheads pressing together, and whispered, “You can tell me.”

But he couldn't. This thing was still too new and too scary to confess. And how could he? What would Keith even think? Pidge and Hunk were one thing--they were as much his brothers as his own. Keith was a fragile thing to have, and Lance didn't want to scare him off when they'd finally come this far.

Turning his head, Lance slid another kiss across his mouth, easing both their hearts. Then he stepped back, waving Keith towards the bed. 

“I got a surprise for you. Go lay down,” Lance instructed, perfectly ignoring the look Keith gave him. He gestured again. “It's good, promise. Go on!

“And!” This, said suddenly, Lance caught half-way through the door, partially in the hall and in his own room, pivoting on the ball of his foot. Keith looked up from where he obediently sat at the mattress’ edge. “No shoes or jacket!” A warmth bloomed in his chest, Keith's amusement his again. Lance shooed it away. “If you need to borrow more pajamas, you know where they are.”

He turned and was gone, full-out running down the hallway, leaving Keith alone in his room to wait, the noise of his frantic feet carrying up to him even from downstairs.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Without witness, Keith tugged on a new pair of Lance's pajamas, purely out of selfishness. He’d wore over a pair of joggers and one of Shiro's shrunken sweaters--comfort clothing, fine enough to wear to bed. But Lance had offered, and Keith was going to take him up on it.

He'd probably sneak off with this set too, to join the other pair he kept ‘forgetting’ to return. These were blue as well. Most of what Lance had in his closet was blue--like the paint on the bedroom walls, the lampshades, his sheets. It must be his favorite color, like Keith's was red and Shiro's was black. 

Sitting back down, Keith smoothed his palms over his borrowed pants, the fleece soft under his touch and almost unbearably warm. The shirt smelled clean, like fresh laundry and some kind of sunny citrus. Lemons, or sweet tangerines. 

It smelled like  _ Lance. _

Just as Keith was wondering how long he'd have to wait, Lance burst through the door, hidden behind a huge, bulging mass he clutched in his hands. Keith blinked at him.

Lance's smiling face peeked around what he held--a comforter, and from the smell of it, fresh out of the dryer. 

This was the surprise?

“Okay, nice, you actually took off your boots,” he laughed. “I'd been worried you'd dirty up the bedsheets. Also, you kick in your sleep sometimes. It hurts.”

Keith sat back on his hands, trying to take him all in, words and blanket and all. “. . .your surprise was that you did your laundry?”

He was instantly rewarded with a peal of delighted laughter.

“No!” Lance could barely get it out. “Well, maybe. If you ask my  _ abuela _ , she'd tell you ‘yes’. But no. Well, kinda, I guess, actually. Just lay down, man, before it gets cold.”

“Before what gets--oh.” Keith understood, and he pushed back on the bed, laying down as Lance had asked. “Really?”

“Like this literally  _ isn't  _ the best perk about living in the modern era, jeez.”

Lance bounced onto the bed, on his knees, and snapped out the blanket once, twice, four times before it unraveled from the knot it'd been twisted into. It fluffed over them, a soft, dark blue cloud--and Lance laid down, pressed to Keith's side, as it drifted over the two of them, covering them from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet.

The pocket of warmth folded them in immediately, the strong, clean smell of laundry detergent and Lance's shampoo. Lemons again, lightly sugared.

_ This _ was Lance's surprise, this cocoon of comfort, the radiating heat from the dryer. The excuse to lay so close.

Why Keith drew in a shuddering breath at it, he couldn't say. Why it both comforted him and made him miserable, he wouldn't tell.

Beside him, propped on his elbows, Lance leaned towards him. Like always, he was all grins and excitement, blue eyes dancing. And as much as he was used to it, Keith still found himself pulled towards him, smiling because he was, like it was an infection and he couldn't help himself. 

"I know it's a little silly," Lance admitted, and laid out over him. They'd done this once or twice before, Lance using Keith's chest as his pillow. Every breath, Lance's head rose and fell, his hair stirred. As before, Keith snaked an arm around Lance's back, fingers lightly touching his side. "But, I dunno, I thought about it earlier. It needed washed anyway, and I was hoping you'd show up again."

"Just so we could do this," Keith asked him without judgement. 

Lance shifted against him, a hum caught in the back of his throat. "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe i just wanted to do this--" He threw a leg over Keith's to make his point on what, exactly, he was talking about. "--and have a good enough reason to." 

Any reason would've been good enough. Keith wanted it as much as Lance did, though he kept quiet, his intentions hidden in smaller ways. He came over night after night for it, sat close or barely touched his fingers to Lance's leg or his arm or held his hand while they talked or did whatever else Lance led them into. He was more comfortable with it, especially after the first time Keith snuck over, probably because his friends weren't in the room. Lance's siblings would pop in from time to time, and even then, Lance didn't flinch back or make it out to be a big deal--he simply answered their questions or promised to finish his chores tomorrow or pointedly groan when he was told he needed to be up earlier in the morning to help milk the cows.

Keith wondered at it all, this endless openness between Lance and his brothers and sisters. Since he started sneaking over, he'd seen Rachel more times than he ever had, and Veronica and Luis had a running gag to throw open Lance's door at random times, like they expected he was up to no good. Lance always laughed, even if he raised his voice like he wasn't just as amused. Keith would watch him get up and shut the door, the music of his Spanish following the accuser out into the hall, saying things Keith could only guess at.

Tonight, no one had interrupted--yet. The hour was late, the McClain's all mostly asleep by the time Keith climbed up to Lance's second-story window. It'd been left cracked, space enough for Keith to ease his hands under and lift, just like the time before that and the time before that. A new bedtime ritual. Lance had sat up drowsily when he crawled into the room, and picked his sleepy steps over to the window to greet him, and that brought something alive inside Keith. He couldn't place it. It wasn't easy to dissect. Whatever it was, it tugged at him now, some fierce thing that kept him coming back and made him tighten his arm around Lance's back.

"What's up," Keith heard Lance murmur, voice muffled against his shirt.

There wasn't an answer he could give.

Keith lifted his shoulders, and turned his face in Lance's hair, breathing in. "Nothing. . .and thank you," he added, as he felt Lance try to shift up again.

He didn't need to see his smile--Keith could hear it in his voice, "Welcome. I'm glad it wasn't stupid."

"Nah. I--" Keith faltered. But this was Lance, open, listening Lance, who gave him the space to be himself. He could tell him. It hurt, but he could tell him. ". . .this is something Dad used to do when I was little. And I guess he did it with Shiro too, because Shiro always does it."

Lance's laugh tickled up his throat. "No! He doesn't!"

The corners of Keith's mouth twitched. "I don't think you understand how much of nerd he is," he said, both lovingly and a little morosely. "It's embarrassing sometimes."

Lance laughed again. "I never would've thought."

"Oh, come on, he has his quirks but he isn't that bad, I guess. Don't your siblings do weird stuff sometimes?"

There wasn't even a grace period to think on it. Lance immediately dove right in. "Oh, trust me, I have three novels and a sequel of all the weird, off-the-wall shit my sibs do. Like, you already noticed this, but the whole clothes sharing thing? Yeah, it's not just me with Rachel or Veronica--we all do it. Have you ever seen a grown man try to fit in a size four shirt just to prove us wrong? Because I have, and have the pictures to prove it. Hold on."

Lance jerked the cover down, leaning out of Keith's arm to snatch his phone from the bedside table. The warmth fled with him, sucked into the cold room, October at its finest. Lance ducked back under, tucking the comforter around their heads with deliberate haste. His soft swear didn't escape unnoticed.

The phone screen was a bit too bright to look at, but secured at his spot again, head tucked right under Keith's chin, Lance flipped through his gallery, swiping through an entire album he lovingly dedicated to his  _ 'familia' _ . Sure enough, and with more than one example, he had pictures to prove Luis had stolen one of his sisters shirts, and had somehow, probably by some weird magic, managed to squeeze inside of it. The fabric looked stressed. The print on the front, a shining, gold font, couldn't be read anymore.

"See? Told you. Luis is a mess," he said fondly. 

While he was at it, he showed off a few more--Marco in Luis' hulking sweatshirts; Rachel from the other night, dressed up for a block party downtown, her outfit a chimaera compiled of a single piece of clothing from all of her siblings wardrobes; Veronica in Rachel's dress, Lance's jacket around her shoulders; and a few of Lance, sporting skirts or button-downs or pajamas that didn't belong to him. 

"I guess we all are," Lance murmured, and again, it was said so fondly there was no room to question what he really meant.

Lance's love for his family shone brighter than his phone screen, than the moon, or the sun that'd rise up in a few hours. Hearing it gild over his voice, sweeten it to honey, panged a place deep in Keith's heart, a reservoir that held that same level of love for a family he no longer had. Sometimes he worried he scared Shiro with how intense he cared. There were moments of flattered conversation, times when Shiro's brow would crease and his mouth would do that thing it did, when he was trying to hide his frown. Maybe it was toxic of him, to cling so much, to fret or be there all the time. Since Adam's death, Keith had stayed with him, day and night, for the entire month. Only since this thing with Lance did he start to break away--but, again, wasn't he just doing the same thing with someone new? 

People weren't cups. He could pour as much of his time and his affection and his deep caring into anyone, but it didn't mean it would fill them up the same way.

Keith felt so lonely sometimes it ached like a fever.

Sometimes he could sit in a room full of people and it only grew worse.

Lance’s soft breathing stirred him from his overthinking, his hands twitching for a better grasp in Keith’s (his own) shirt. He shifted, and rose up, and in the darkness that enveloped them, his eyes were the same hue as the clear, autumn sky.

“What’s wrong,” he asked, like he knew the sorry way Keith was tearing himself apart inside. Like it read on his face or the turmoil of his racing heart. A sadness deep enough to haunt the air.

Another pang. Another electric shiver up his back. He reached up and cupped the side of Lance’s face, and thrilled when Lance unconsciously turned into the touch.

This thing between them--this new, exciting thing--was already precious to him. Too much so. They walked on tentative ground, Keith shy and wanting, Lance bold and willing to take Keith’s hands when he didn’t offer them. But was it healthy? Would anything good come from this, if it was given more time?

He wanted it. Oh, God, did he want it. Looking up at Lance now, his question mulling in the back of his mind, smelling his shampoo and feeling the warmth of him washing him from tip-to-toe, he wanted this more than he had anything else. Keith curled his fingers in the hair slipping over Lance’s ear and, in answer, leaned forward enough to kiss him.

At his core, Keith really was a selfish person.

He slid his hand to grip the back of Lance’s neck, and Lance responded by crawling over him, legs to either side of his hips. They laid against each other, Lance slightly bowed over him, rocking toward him the slight distance to replace the kiss when their mouths accidentally parted.

He even tasted like lemon drops, tart and sweet.

“I’m sorry,” Keith muttered in the fragile space between them, whenever Lance pulled back to breathe.

The comforter had trapped their warmth and heavy breathing, turned it sauna-hot and stifling. Keith threw it off Lance’s shoulders, where it pooled around their waists like summer water. 

“Why are you sorry,” Lance asked him. His hands were on his chest, absently tracing over the design printed on the front--stars and rockets, more things repeated around the room, as beloved as the color blue. “You don’t have anything to sorry about, Keith.”

If only he knew.

Keith had a long, ongoing list of wrongs. They outweighed all his attempts to do right, evident in how he ruined the moment Lance had planned for them or in the way he finally drove Shiro out of town with his constant presence.

That hurt the worst, out of all of them.

He shut his eyes. Keith laid his hands over his face, hiding it away, keeping this part of him private. This was his to deal with alone. He caused it, and he’d deal with it, for as long as Shiro stayed away, doing whatever it was he needed to do.

Above him, Lance grabbed his hands. First, his touch hesitated over his knuckles, recalling the bruises, probably. Another ‘wrong’, expertly printed on his skin for everyone to gawk at. He shouldn’t have gotten so worked up, shouldn’t have tried to shatter stone with his bare hands. The small, sloping fence protecting the graveyard from road travel stood as strong and unmoving as ever, no matter how many times Keith slammed his fists bloody against it. It didn’t budge--and for a long time after, neither did the anguish that drove Keith to do it in the first place.

Gently, Lance threaded their fingers together, and he squeezed Keith’s hands like he could heal away every bad thing Keith kept tucked inside. And, somehow, it worked, just a little.

“Why do you feel sorry,” Lance asked him, trying again. 

It was hard to resist him when he looked at him like that, and held his hands tenderly, his thumbs rubbing over his knuckles in small circles. 

Keith looked away. He swallowed hard, around the words that wanted to pour out of him, around the sudden, hard lump in his throat.

“. . .I don’t know.” A whisper, torn past his lips. His body lit up like a string of lights, blinking out a warning that he needed to stop or to run--there wasn’t another option that would have this end well.

Lance kept looking at him. Kept looking and waiting, his hands in Keith’s, the warmth of him trying to fill every crack. It was enough, and it wasn’t, because it attempted to do something impossible.

No amount of this could entirely heal him. Only dead or missing things could. A father, a mother--a half-brother, two towns away, gone for ‘business’.

Keith wanted his family. Lance wasn’t his family. He was close, closer than anyone had been in years, but it wasn’t what Keith needed. And for some reason, Lance’s concern made him feel worse. Seeing those blue eyes scanning his face, the pinch between his brow, tore Keith to ribbons.

Lance still tried. He told him, “You don’t have to be sorry all the time, Keith. It’s okay. It’s okay to feel. . . whatever you’re feeling. Sad or happy or--whatever. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that and feel like you have to apologize to me. Or to yourself. Or to anyone. You’re human.”

He let go of Lance’s hands.

The hurt on Lance’s face--the twist of his mouth, the sudden shine over his eyes--kicked Keith hard in the chest. It would haunt him for days, that look. For being the reason for it.

Lance understood without being told: He moved off Keith as he pushed up from the bed. 

Keith gave him every sort of excuse he could think of, anything phrased slightly askance from an apology to hopefully dodge Lance’s notice. Keith tugged on his boots. His jacket. In his haste, he forgot his actual clothes, piled down in the shadow cast off the bed frame.

The wonder of it all came from Lance’s hands again. They fell on Keith’s back, pressed and soothed, rubbing down the raised bumps of his spine. Keith shuddered involuntarily, and paused, half-standing, already on his way to the window, craving this as much as he tried to leave it behind.

“It’s okay,” Lance told him again. His hands swooped up and up and through his hair, combing the long tangles away from his neck. “I get it. It’s okay.”

Keith shouldered away the moment after Lance pressed a kiss where his hands had been, shooting fire down his back, burning him from the outside in.

October swallowed him up easier than it had spat him out. The night closed around him, welcomed him back, and drew him down the dark road into town. A faint trace of daylight hinted at the horizon, muddied behind approaching clouds. The air smelled damp and wet and cold--exactly opposite of Lance and his bedroom.

Keith pressed his hand to the back of his neck, and hated himself a little more each step he took away from the farmhouse and the boy he abandoned inside.

It was better this way, really.

That’s what he kept telling himself anyway.

Each time he repeated it, he believed it less and less.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lance stood at his open window, awash in the same, crisp air Keith was, as Indigo Pull lay stretched out beneath him, pulling the sight of that red jacket further and further away. Once Keith hit the bend, the last glance of his sleeve took to the night, and that was all he was left with. Memories and a small, scattered pile of Keith’s clothes, forgotten on the floor. 

Lance folded his shaking fingers around the windowsill, squeezed it until the metal frame bit pink imprints into his palms. He waited, eyes latched on Keith’s back, for him to turn around.

He didn’t.

Pushing back, Lance dropped the window closed and crawled back into bed.

The sheets were cold.

The blanket he jerked over his his head, without the two of them beneath it, was cool to the touch. 

His bed was unbelievably empty.

Sleep took a long time to come, and when it finally did, Lance dreamt of Keith’s face and the black ink of sorrow crashing a river through them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, did I tell you that writing the Klance is my favorite? Because it's my favorite. The giant NERDS.


	12. Chapter 12

Just as the anticipation of finding something-- _ anything _ , any hint or lead or clue--started to wane, one of the generous volunteers, his arms elbow-deep in the muddy waters of some nameless pond, caught something heavy and metal in his fingers. The odd, misshapen mass, fished free from a tangle of river weed and sucking mud, turned out to be, of all things, a wrench.

It was the first thing Iverson had to go on the entire month. Clearly, this tool was found a long way from home. Someone had hastily chucked it into this pond hoping it'd be overlooked or, as it happened, would take too long for the small group of volunteers to find. The water had stolen every ounce of evidence it could’ve had. What was placed on his desk, a scant ten minutes later, had been cleaned thoroughly. Once before, and after, when the wrench sank to the pond bed, the water doing the worst of the damage.

Iverson pinched the bridge of his nose.

The breath he expelled shuffled the sheets of paper scattered around his desk. Case notes, newspaper clippings, records of interviews. There were pictures too, some of Adam, some of Shiro with him, others with vaguely familiar faces and barely recalled names. Friends and distant family members, cousins, old classmates, anyone that might have a connection to Adam, to the case. Anyone that might harbor some personal vindication or vendetta or vile dislike. Anyone that might have curled their hand around this wrench and stuck Adam down when he stepped out of his car to greet them.

The sheriff hated to admit it, but the closest they came to having any of that was with Shiro, and that ended cold. Shiro, during the interrogation and after (as he always was), remained polite and honest, answering every question they threw at him. The abili he gave was solid--his kid brother, Keith, ran to the station once he heard, and told them the same things Shiro had. That they’d been together at Shiro’s city apartment that morning. Specifically talking over eggs and coffee. Shiro had offhandedly mentioned he was reading the paper; Keith blurted out remembering something about a headline, to date it, and Iverson let the trail end there.

Texas Kogane had been a friend of his. And while Iverson didn’t know Keith as well as Shiro, he knew and remembered the way the kid ran head-first with his emotions, quick to anger. Which was good. People tended to slip up when they let their anger get the best of them.

And even as Iverson stoked and poked and deliberately drove Keith to the height of it, put him in a place he couldn’t even answer the questions thrown at him without his voice cracking or rising, Keith kept to his story. The same one Shiro gave. 

Besides, and maybe a bit unprofessionally biased, Iverson didn’t think either of them could’ve done it. To hear Adam talk about the two of them left no room to doubt. There was love there, the unmovable kind, the kind people wrote about in books or tried to mimic in movies. The real deal.

Reaching over the evidence bag, Iverson picked up one of the few frames sitting on his desk. Most were of his family--his dead wife, his grown daughters--but one was reserved for his lost deputy. The day he framed it and set it on his desk, Adam chanced on it, and he laughed in his gentle way, taking the photograph in his hands to examine it.

“Really,” he’d asked, and Iverson still remembered the laugh caught between the two L’s.

Iverson didn’t tell him much. Just lifted a shoulder and went about with the paperwork. He didn’t think that it needed said at the time, he simply assumed Adam understood it as much as Iverson showed it: That he and Shiro were like sons to him. Hell, he’d watched them grow up, watched the two find each other and the story that came after. Iverson thought it was obvious.

He didn’t just give out jobs to anyone.

Presently, he looked at the photo, at Adam’s wild grin, and felt it again, that dull ache of missing someone important.

The office never felt so small. The room across from him--well, he’d locked it up a couple of weeks ago, kept the lights dark and the contents inside untouched. Shiro took what he wanted anyway, mostly Adam’s old coats and a few personal items, medals, framed degrees, stuff like that.

Iverson set the picture down.

This was the part he didn’t like in any investigation. 

The blaming and accusing. The making up wild theories that, God, he hoped weren’t true.

There was really only one place that kept around these types of tools. The wrench was five pounds, easy, industrial-sized. The kind someone would need to fix heavy machinery. . .

. . .like cars.

With a grunt, the sheriff pushed away from his desk. He put on his hat, shouldered into his coat, and headed out into the cloudy afternoon to pay the Garrett’s a visit.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


“This  _ sucks _ ,” Lance groaned, dragging up the hill him and the others--Hunk and Pidge and Allura--climbed. 

His back was comically bent, backpack a blue shell, his feet scuffing across the blacktop. Allura hid her chuckle behind her hand. Hunk was more open about his laughter, and it cantered through the valley and returned to them, echoing off the mountains. And Pidge, of course, threw his whole weight on Lance’s back, clutching on to his backpack.

“It only sucks because you made yourself fall behind, man,” Pidge chirped at him.

Lance staggered. Shaking Pidge off without losing his footing was an act of such strong dexterity that he should’ve been recognized for it. 

“Listen here, not all of us are obsessed with finishing our homework, brainiac. So  _ excuse me _ for getting a little set back here. It wasn’t like I wasn’t  _ trying _ .” Lance said this all very dramatically, with a thrown out hand and everything. Again, something no one laughed at. They were killing him. “Plus the math homework never makes sense. Why does the example seem so easy, and then it goes from like, level one math to level six math for the homework? The system is broken, Pidge.”

Pidge scoffed. “The  _ system _ is trying to get you to develop critical thinking skills, Lance. Which is clearly not working.”

“Why are you so mean,” Lance huffed, stabbing a finger between Pidge’s eyes.

From the side, Allura cut in, “I’m afraid I have to agree with Lance here. Sometimes the problems are unnecessarily difficult.”

Hunk murmured, “You’re in Trig, though. Lance is still scraping by in Algebra 2.”

Allura curled her fingers over her mouth, knuckles pressed to the leftover pink stain of her lipstick. “Oh,” she said and playfully winced over at him.

They were teasing. If they weren’t, Lance would know--and he  _ did  _ check, shifting through their emotions one-by-one to verify they weren’t saying things like that to intentionally hurt him. He was getting better at sensing it, even from Allura, the newest inclusion to their walks to and from school. It’d happened earlier in the month, when running late again, Allura came up on Pidge and Hunk and Lance in their small cluster, and asked to join them. After that, and some brief discussion between them, the three started meeting her at the gate to her house in the mornings. 

Lance had noticed her sitting alone at lunch first. And her mostly preferring to walk home alone. At first, he assumed this was a personal choice, given her cousin, Romelle, in any given class, made it a point to sit as close as possible. But it ended there. Lance didn’t know know where Romelle lived in Indigo Pull, if she had a home close to Lion Castle or not, or if the idea to walk home together even occurred to her, but she usually said her cheerful goodbyes to Allura on school grounds.

Sometimes, Lance and his friends would come up on Allura sitting beneath one of the old oaks planted in the front yard, perched like a bird on the knotted roots rising from the ground, reading or doing homework. The three of them left the school later than most, thanks to Pidge always staying behind in classes or flagging down teachers in the halls to bombard them with questions. Hunk was just as bad some days, if the itch hit him. Lance was glad enough just to hang out that extra bit of time and hardly complained.

And it wasn’t so bad, hanging out with Allura now, too.

For one, she was way nicer than Lance thought possible for someone clearly from a long, long line of old money. And for two, her mutual dislike of James Griffin welcomed her into their friend circle on principle alone, if you asked Lance. And boy, did she carry a special sort of hate for the guy.

Pidge noticed that he was caught up in thinking and threw himself into Lance’s side, weaponizing his stabby, little elbow. Pain bloomed from the contact and tossed him off balance--Lance lost his footing and started to go down.

Hunk jerked him up by the backpack straps before he hit the ground. “Careful, buddy. You know what happens to turtles when they fall on their backs.”

“They die,” Pidge told him.

“ _ What! _ They do not, shut up, Pidge. Allura, tell Pidge to shut up and leave me alone.” Lance broke away from Hunk’s steadying hands, patting his arm in an offhanded ‘thank you’. With his other hand, he rubbed at the sting below his ribcage.

Allura crossed her arms behind her back as they walked. She wore a sudden, sly smile, and tilted her head in a way that made her cotton hair cascade over one of her shoulders. 

“I could try, but that doesn’t mean he’d listen,” she confessed.

That was point three: After hearing how Lance and Hunk referred to Pidge, she turned and asked him, delicately phrasing the question to keep from seeming intrusive or judgmental--“You go by he/him and Pidge, exclusively, correct?” Because, of course, she heard it through school, the mix of names and pronouns, some said for lack of knowing and some said to hurt Pidge on purpose. 

Ever since, Pidge had taken up with her a little easier, and stopped slouching so badly whenever she joined them on lunch. Progress, however small. Another tiny victory, like when Pidge finally ditched Matt’s oversized sweatshirt and started wearing his own, baggy clothes again.

“She has a point.” Pidge swatted the back of his hand against Lance’s arm, snapping his attention back over to him. “Also, turtles are more  _ apt _ to die if they get turned on their backs. Because they get  _ stuck _ .”

Lance heard the hidden jab. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you guys going to help me with this make-up work or not,” he asked all three of them, adjusting his backpack. The books inside shifted, their hard corners digging against his spine.

In the end, Hunk offered his help. Pidge remained stubborn about it because he was Pidge, and Allura seemed to think the question wasn’t directed at her and didn’t offer an answer. It worked out better that way: Pidge and Allura’s were their first stops, Hunk’s house following, so Lance could hang there until he needed to head home.

They parted ways with Pidge at his house--and yes, Lance tried to subtly peek past the Holt’s front gate to catch a glimpse of anything beyond. Hunk jerked him away, knowing what he was doing, as did Pidge, who shot an impressively threatening frown in his direction. The same thing happened at Allura’s, with Hunk purposely marching them right past after they said goodbye.

Out of earshot, Hunk warned him, “Man, don’t. You keep saying you have better control over it, and I get it, and I see it, trust me. But that doesn’t mean you have to walk right into it again. Like, can you give yourself a second? Please?”

“I’m  _ fine _ , Hunk, I promise!” This argument was two months old. Hunk and Pidge’s worry was just as stale, refreshed each time Lance ‘tried to do something stupid’ as they liked to harp. “And it was just a peek. Nothing hurts from just peeking.”

“You want my help with your homework?”

Lance’s shoulders sagged. It was hopeless. “Yeah, okay, fine.”

“No, say it. I want your word.”

Lance bit the inside of his cheek. After a moment, he held out his hand, fingers curled into his palm. “Yeah, yeah. I promise not to mess around just yet.”

It was the best he’d get, and Hunk knew it. He bumped his knuckles against Lance’s, satisfied, and threw that same arm around his shoulders, tugging him close as they walked down the lane to his house.

“I know you’re tired of hearing us get on your case about it. Buddy, we know you. But you also know  _ us _ . I’m not lying when I tell you I can’t handle you getting overwhelmed again. Pidge can’t either. Whatever you’re expecting to see out there can wait.”

Lance cast him a glance, saw the worried twist of his face as much as he felt it, knotted between them. Hunk was right. He was always right.

“I know. Sorry. I’m just impatient. Don’t you want to know what’s up at Pidge’s, though?” Before Hunk could answer, Lance interjected, admitting, “I miss going over there.”

This softened some of Hunk’s apprehension.

His friend let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I know. Just, a few more weeks okay? For me?”

Hunk never asked for anything.

How could Lance refuse?

“Okay,” he promised, again, though this time it came out more heartfelt. He didn’t want to hurt anyone--Hunk or Pidge. . .or, if he was being honest and felt like digging up the thing he’d been ignoring all day,  _ Keith _ . 

The way he left the night before still stung. He understood Keith was going through some stuff, had known the ruin of his feelings for as long as he could sense them. And probably before that, if he wanted to get down to the heart of it. Keith grieved over his father, missed his mom, and Pidge told him during school that he hadn’t seen Keith around much since Shiro left a few days before. 

Keith’s entire family was scattered, out of reach.

Lance couldn’t stand it if he’d been in Keith’s shoes, if his mother wasn’t around, or if his siblings all took off without warning, if his dad--no, he couldn’t bear to think it.

All day, he wished he hadn’t messed up. Lance tried to think back on everything he did--or what he didn’t do that Keith clearly needed. He came up short. Unless, somehow, Keith caught him prodding at his feelings, Lance couldn’t determine anything out of the normal for them. 

Hunk squeezed his arm around Lance’s shoulders. Lance started, and at the look on Hunk’s face, groaned apologetically.

“Sorry. I’m doing it again,” Lance voiced before Hunk had the chance.

“Totally not what I was going to say, but yeah, you are.” He was quiet for a second. “We noticed you were a bit glum today. Kinda weird, and maybe you’re like getting to, like, Level Two of your powers or something, but I felt it a little bit, like you were putting out a radio signal of bad vibes. Pidge, too. You know that’s why he was picking on you. He was trying to get you out of your funk.”

Lance hadn’t even noticed. Some friend he was. He frowned to himself, crossed his arms. “Can you still feel it?”

“What? That you’re, like, in the doldrums?” Hunk scrunched up his brow in thought, humming a tuneless noise as he processed the question. “Yeah, actually. You wanna talk about it?”

He did. He really,  _ really _ did. “Yeah--you. . .don’t care? It’s about Keith.”

Hunk cocked a brow at him. “Why would I care?”

“I don’t. . .Pidge has been weird about it since I. . .well, I guess since the night Keith showed up unannounced. I-- _ felt _ it. And even the day after that, when we were at lunch? And I told you guys everything? Pidge still was acting funny about it.”

“Funny how?”

Lance had to think. “I. . .don’t know. Just  _ bad _ . Like--oh! I know! Like, you know how your stomach goes all tense and swoopy when you’re about to go around the loop of a rollercoaster? That weird, scared, jittery feeling? Kinda like. . .that?”

“No, I don’t know that feeling, because, hello, rollercoasters are death machines people pay to ride, but, okay. I think I get what you’re saying.” Hunk offered him a sheepish grin, and he rubbed it off his mouth with his hand afterwards, like it was in bad taste. “. . .I know what’s up, but it’s not really my place to say, if you guys haven’t talked it out.”

Here was when Lance broke away from Hunk’s light embrace, stepping around to cut him off, parking it right in front of him. Hunk already anticipated it and stopped moving, so the two didn’t collide and find themselves eating asphalt before dinner.

“What do you mean? Has Pidge  _ talked _ to you?” Lance stabbed his fingers against his own chest, repeatedly, until it  _ hurt _ . “About--about all that? And not me?”

He gave Lance a look. “Hey, no, don’t do that thing where you get mad at me ‘cause I’m the middle man.”

“I’m not mad!”

“You sure? You  _ sound _ mad. You sound mad and you still feel miserable, which, dude, please, if you can stop it, stop it. I’ve been fighting tears all day.” Hunk pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He took in a deep, heavy breath, and huffed it all out, the cool air magicking it into a small cloud. “Listen, just. . .calm down, alright? I’ll tell you what Pidge told me. He’ll be pissed, but, whatever, someone needs to moderate the two of you, and I’m the only one willing to do it.”

Hunk dropped his hands.

Lance turned his head, ignoring the sympathetic way Hunk watched him. 

He hooked on to every little thing he’d been thinking on--Keith, mostly, if he wanted to be honest--and imagined pulling it all in, tucking it back in the secret, private place of his own, worried heart. And once he did, and Lance’s chest squeezed and pinched, his throat burning like the backs of his eyes, did he realize that he  _ had _ been tossing it out like Hunk had said. Because now he  _ hurt _ and he  _ worried _ and he was definitely about to cry.

“I--” Lance’s voice snapped in two. He pressed a hand to his mouth, turned his eyes to Hunk’s, and shook his head, trying again. “I didn’t even. . .know I could do that.”

“Level Two,” Hunk told him again. 

Maybe. Lance made a mental note to ask Rachel or Veronica about it when he got home.

“Okay, anyway,” Lance murmured, hands falling. “What's up with Pidge?”

Hunk looked like he hoped Lance would forget. As they picked up walking, he confessed, “Okay, so. You and Keith are a thing now, right?” Hunk cut his eyes over to him. “Right?”

Lance wasn't so sure anymore. Not after last night. He shrugged, watching his own feet now, his shoulders slumped. “Guess so.”

“That's why Pidge's upset.”

“What? Because I'm seeing someone?” He scoffed. “Don't tell me Pidge is  _ jealous _ .”

“I wasn't. He's not jealous, Lance--he's worried. And you gotta understand why, like, the root of where he's coming from. Because this isn’t the first time he's been like this. Don't you remember when I dated Shay last year? Pidge did the same thing.”

Lance didn't get it. “Okay? But why?”

Hunk bit his lip, and he offered a little laugh to the October air, mirthless and sad. “I kinda figured you'd sense it,” he said, mostly to himself, thinking out loud. “He's scared he'll lose us.”

Lance's feet stopped moving. He rocked forward from the weight of his backpack, and then backwards, until his feet rested flat. “Lose us? To what!”

His friend went on, both in his explanation and towards home. “Lance, buddy, you get caught up with things. We pick on you about it, but you’re a little obsessive sometimes. Which, cool, it's fine, but Pidge. . .” He trailed off. Lance couldn't ignore the heaviness Hunk carried, threaded with understanding and a whisper of empathy. “. . .Pidge already almost lost a brother.”

It all clicked into place then. Pidge's standoffishness, the gnawing worry in his belly. The way he got whenever Lance mentioned Keith, or talked too long about him, or the night Keith first snuck over and Lance felt the first seeds of something wrong. 

“Oh, man, is that what it is? Now I feel like a jerk.” Lance turned and followed Hunk down the lane. “Why didn't he just say something? I didn't mean to make him feel like that.”

“And he knows that. He knows it's all him and not really anything you're doing. You guys just need to talk about it, reassure one another, you know?” Hunk paused, glancing back at Lance, and waited for him to catch up. 

Hunk draped his arm around Lance's shoulders again, pulling him to his side. They walked like that for a while, Lance caught up in his head and Hunk knowing and understanding why. There were times Hunk would try to pull him from it, and there were times like these, where Hunk kept his own silence to give Lance time to work things out by himself.

As they drew the curve of the road with their feet, Hunk finally asked him, “Did you still want to talk about Keith?”

Lance had nearly forgotten. “Nah. It's okay. It's just dumb overthinking stuff anyway.”

“I doubt it was ‘dumb’, if it--”

But he didn't finish. The words were chased away, startled by the sight of the town police car parked in the Garrett's driveway.

The plummet of Hunk's fear drug Lance's stomach to his feet. A moment of shock froze them in place--then they tore down the road, running in blind panic. Hunk tore up the porch steps, the door snapping behind him, bouncing against the wall.

Lance staggered inside, hitting the wide, strong plain of Hunk's back. His backpack finally gave up and slid off his shoulders. It pounded against the floor like a single, ominous beat from a drum.

The Garrett's living room had a high, barn ceiling, ribbed with exposed, oak planks. The walls were painted a orangey-yellow, like the hearts of daffodils, or the rays of sunflower petals. Matching rugs were slipped under worn couches, well-used as the blankets draped over their backs. The side tables corners were blunted from age.

This was a home of endless comfort and love.

So to see the rigid stances of three people standing at the heart of the room--not sitting, not laughing with booming voices or talking with musical joy--filled Lance with dread.

Three solemn faces turned at the commotion--Mrs. Garrett's, tense with nerves; Mr. Garrett's, steely and controlled, his patent smile gone; and Sheriff Iverson’s, wrinkles fanning from his eyes and carving deep, unhappy trenches around his frowning mouth. 

Their voices fell into a hush when the boys tumbled in. Mrs. Garrett took a step forward.

“Hunk, honey--”

“What's wrong, what's going on, why's the sheriff here--” The words flew past Hunk's lips, trembling. He took a step into the room, towards them, Lance at his back, hands pressed against his shirt to keep the two then steady.

“Yeah,” Lance piped up, glancing between all of the adults. The room was a blister, festering with negative energy. It swooned like vertigo through his head, made Lance uncertain on his feet. Everything tilted a little askance, there was that much anger and suspicion pressing against him. A headache pounded at his temples.

He turned his attention to Hunk, latching on to his pitching emotions. They trilled in anxiety, but it was better than feeling all the rest.

Iverson grunted. “Get along now, kids. This ain’t your business.”

Mr. Garrett's crossed his arms. He and Hunk were a lot alike, quick to smile and kind to the marrow, built strong with soft hearts. Right now, he was anything  _ but _ that.

“Aw, come on now, Mitch,” he began, earning an immediate disapproving look from his wife. “Don't you wanna tell my kid that you’re accusing me of killing Adam?” 

Three, four people felt the same shiver of disgust. Lance's entire body convulsed with it. He was grateful for the cover of Hunk’s back, for the attention diverted towards Iverson.

Iverson looked ready to spit. “I ain't accusing anyone of anything. I came over to ask some questions, and I got my answers. Quiet down.”

Hunk lit up like a bonfire. Any of his fear transmuted into anger, fast as a flicker of lightning in dark, summer skies. He blazed and burned and Lance stood behind him, blazing and burning too.

“You think my  _ dad _ killed Adam? My dad's never hurt anyone, what makes you think he killed anyone,” Hunk seethed. His hands were trembling at his sides. “I was  _ with him _ that morning! In the garage. We were fixing up a car together before I went to school, there's--there's video proof, check the cameras, we're both on the footage--”

“I said  _ quiet down _ ,” Iverson cut across him. “I'm just doing my job, kid. But I'll tell you what--no, I don't think your pops killed Adam. But someone  _ did _ . I'm trying to piece together the evidence best I can, with what I got.”

“And what's that,” Lance blurted. His voice was heated, taking on Hunk's tone. 

Everyone in the room looked at him. Lance came out from behind Hunk, standing tall, arms folded over his chest to mirror Iverson's pose. 

“I don't think that's your business,” Iverson told him.

“Cut it out, Mitch. No one cares if you look tough.” The rest was directed to Lance, Mr. Garrett answering his question, “Seems like he found a wrench somewhere and thought it came from the shop.”

Hunk frowned. “A wrench? Like a lug wrench, a socket wrench or, or, or a--”

“Kind's not important,” Iverson interrupted before Hunk could list off any more. 

This didn't stop him. Hunk carried on like Iverson hadn't tried to dismiss him. “Except it  _ is _ or your first thought wouldn't have been to come here. So it's got to be something we use on the cars or on farm equipment that gets brought in. But that could be  _ anyone _ . Indigo Pull is mostly farmland and the plantation. Anyone could have a wrench to fit that. Us or, like, not saying anything bad here, even the McClain's.”

Lance bristled. Not at Hunk's verbal train of thought, but at the look in Iverson's eye when he said it. Panic clawed his insides bloody and snapped his throat shut.

“You're right,” Iverson admitted. He took his hat from a chair, where it'd been sitting since Lance and Hunk rushed through the door. “That's where I'm heading next.”

Hunk's hands curled into fists. Lance felt it more than he heard it, the swift punch of his spoken, “ _ What?! _ ”

Iverson tugged his sheriff's hat down over his ears. His coat hissed like wild snakes as he stepped up beside Lance.

“Come on,” he told him, placing a firm hand on Lance's shoulder. The room dimmed at the edges; Lance's stomach heaved and rolled. “I'll give you a ride home.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

The McClain's checked clean as well, not that there was ever any doubt. Iverson made his rounds, checked the sheds and barns, examined all the tools the family owned. And besides, the family had an alibi for the morning of Adam's murder. Luis and Marco worked with their father in the fields, and they had more than enough people who would vouch seeing them on the commute to work or while taking their kids to school.

Iverson left around an hour later, satisfied and displeased all rolled into one. 

Lance had never been more thrilled to see someone go. 

He sat out on the porch steps now, legs up and his cheek pressed to the tops of his knees, watching the shadows grow longer and longer in the approaching dusk. Inside, catapulted on his bed, was his bag, his homework once again forgotten. The weeks had lined up distraction after distraction, and between Pidge and Keith and learning his own, new family secrets, Lance couldn't focus enough to open a book. Or to work out a problem. Or enjoy any of the classes he normally did, Biology, Culinary Arts.

The trees in the yard caught the breeze. Autumn always touched the farm with a careful hand, nurturing the jewel corn, the neat rows of large pumpkins. In a few weeks, the family would go down collectively, pick their favorites for carving, and sell the rest at the town market. Their orange skins stood out under the periwinkle twilight, sickly yellow, off-hue, almost glowing, further down in the fields.

Lance took comfort in seeing them, rotund and well-grown as they were every year. Sylvio and Nadia had been discussing jack-o-lantern designs since September. Everything from the cartoon-y to the macabre, ghosts to monsters to a simple, wide-toothed grin. Lance rated their drawings when they asked, and answered with his own idea, if the two wore him down enough.

“A rocket,” he'd say, as he said every year since he was six. “I'm going to carve a rocket.”

In a gallery of ghouls and haunts, it always stood out, and Lance kind of liked it that way. The front porch wouldn't look the same without it.

Lance stretched out his long legs, sinking back on the steps with his hands propped by his hips. His eyes were drawn up by impulse, and he saw the smooth belly of clouds draped through the sky, fat with rain. No stars. No playground for rockets.

The day had drained him. Though everything ended fine, Lance held on to his jitters. His mother cooked up a good of a meal as ever--beans and cornbread and grilled chicken--while swearing over it, her dormant anger waking up more and more the longer Iverson stayed. It didn’t have the same, comforting affect it usually did, and Lance tried to double-up with seconds to let her magic work its course. Tonight it was vacant, like Iverson’s sudden intrusion sapped it clean out of her. Rachel or Veronica never mentioned their abilities could fatigue, but in hindsight, it made sense. If the magic could grow, it could tire. All things do.

They set out the plate for Keith, same as always, on the counter by the stove.

And Lance put it away before coming outside, to think and wait on the rain.

He felt miserable, torn and twisted up. He wanted to find Keith and talk to him. He wanted to go over to Pidge's and flop down on his bed like always, talk or listen to Pidge tinker with his computer. He wanted to sit at Hunk's, cozied in the kitchen, while Hunk baked him oatmeal cookies for his heartache and fed him advice for his troubles.

The wanting ripped him to ribbons. It moved inside him, clenched around his throat, his heart, his gut. Lance dug his palms into his stomach. He rocked forward, face to his knees again, and swallowed the lump in his throat.

His head was a mess. A dizzying swirl of thinking and waiting and wanting and hoping and so many other things they could barely fit inside. He was a wad of string, too many ends knotted up into a tight ball.

Lance dropped his hands suddenly and shot up to his feet. He sucked in a breath, vaulting down the steps to the walkway, and let those awful feelings turn his head towards the tree line.

The McClain land was divided into two parts: The fields and the forest. The fields were at the back of the house, and were split between crops and a few fences of livestock--chickens, cows, the one goat. At the front of the house, the yard that dipped towards town, started in a sparse scatter of trees that thickened near the road. The street only had one direction--the opposite became a dirt path that ended partially into the thicket, more a turn-around for lost drivers than much of anything else. 

It went on for several miles, the forest, and eventually looped back around to the McClain’s open fields and their barns. Lance and his brothers played through most of their summers there, exploring the sheltered land. It was mostly just the trees and the things trees attracted, birds and squirrels and beetles. Deeper in, probably out further than their property line, Lance remembered there were a couple dilapidated sheds and the crumbled ruins of a hunting shack, a few streams branching off the main river, and ditches in the earth from no understandable source. 

Twilight pulled shadows like taffy across the yard in the shapes of trees and arms and legs, reaching towards the porchlight. It edged the color red into purple, and black into a new shade of violet.

Keith faltered when Lance ran up, meeting him half-way between home and the thicket. His leg was drawn up mid-step, and sank, awkwardly, back to the ground. His face held a charming bemusement.

“. . .were you waiting on me,” Keith asked, glancing from Lance to the porch and back again.

It sure looked like that was the case. And maybe it had been, and Lance (being Lance) made up other excuses to sit outside. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been at least a little hopeful.

Lance offered a fluid shrug. “What if I was,” he asked him back, keeping it light, toeing around what he really wanted to ask. What they needed to talk about.

Keith didn't know whether to smile or frown, and so turned his head, staring off towards the woods he just left. That was odd, too. Usually, Keith followed the road, kept to pavement. What was he doing in there?

Upon closer inspection, Lance noted leaves glued to the side of Keith's jacket, twigs stuck in the back of his hair. Dirt smudged one of his cheeks. The clothes he wore were  _ his _ clothes, the pajamas from the night before.

Keith didn’t answer him and Lance tripped over himself to keep the conversation going, his nerves flaring up. 

“Okay, would it be weird if I said ‘kinda’? I sort of was. Or more like, I was hoping you’d show up. Because. Last night. . .it didn't go so well. And I--”

He trailed off.

Keith looked at him again. His emotions were so densely mixed Lance couldn't make sense of them.

“. . .that's why I came back tonight, actually,” Keith murmured. He fidgeted with his jacket sleeve, noticed the leaves and dusted them away. “I--we need to talk. About. Everything.”

Dread rose goosebumps along Lance’s arms and across his shoulders, caused him to take a step back. It was his. It was Keith's. They felt the same thing which made Lance feel it twice as hard, twice as much.

“What--do you mean?” Trying to keep his voice steady was a losing battle before he even started it. “What's ‘everything’?”

Keith shied away. His eyes darted off, looking at everything but Lance. “. . .Look, Lance, I've been thinking. . .and maybe this. Isn't such a good idea.” 

His meaning was clear even if he didn't explicitly voice it.

‘This’ meant ‘them’, their loose dating. All their nights walking Indigo Pull, the stone throwing competitions at the river, their one, real date at the dinner. All their late night talks. The gentle kissing. The sneaking over and the climbing through Lance's bedroom window and the hours laying together on his bed.

‘This’ meant their feelings. ‘This’ meant  _ Lance _ and it meant  _ Keith _ and ‘isn't such a good idea’ meant  _ shouldn't be together anymore _ .

Something cracked inside of him.

“What isn't a good idea, what are you talking about, Keith?” Lance sucked a sharp breath between his teeth.  _ Oh. Of course _ . Because he did it. He pushed Keith away, did something to scare him off or upset him. Lance didn't give Keith what he needed. He'd been selfish with his affection, made it all about him. “What did I do?”

The closest name for what rippled through Keith was  _ anguish _ . “You didn't do anything, Lance.”

“What did I  _ need _ to do? If I messed up, I'm sorry, just let me know, okay, I can fix it--”

Keith actually stepped into him, caught his hands between his cold ones. Impulse drove him forward, a conscious decision made him let go. Lance watched him squeeze his hands into fists and stow them away in his jacket pockets, punching his knuckles against the lining.

“It's not like that--”

“Then what  _ is  _ it?” Lance couldn't stand it, the storm of all their emotions heaving inside him. He might actually split apart. His body threatened to unravel and burst. “I thought--weren't you happy?”

Lance knew he was. Or he was once. There were moments of clarity when Lance could feel it, fluttering inside him, making him smile, fueling the fire of his own feelings. He thought he had made Keith happy with all his dumb, stupid jokes or the loud way he filled a room. He made Keith laugh, caught him smiling to himself even if he tried to hide it. 

Had it all been a huge misunderstanding?

There were tears in his eyes, a vice around his throat. He wanted to make it better. He didn't know what to do besides try.

Keith wouldn't look at him. That, somehow, was worse. “It's not anything like that. It's not you, Lance. It's--I--I'm sorry, okay? I can't do this, and I'm sorry, you--” 

Whatever he was about to say shifted into a wordless noise in his mouth. It seemed to undo him--not outwardly, but deep down, where Lance felt it start.

“Just talk to me Keith. Please, can't we just talk?--”

Lance went to him, pulled to his aching like he'd always been, his heart wanting him to feel better no matter the cost. He laid his hands on Keith's shoulders, and that was the final fracture in the glasswork holding the two of them together.

Keith shattered first.

He jerked away, spun, giving him his back. Lance's hands clawed through the open air, snagging nothing, absolutely nothing. 

“Stop it! There's nothing to talk about, I can't  _ do _ this, I can't--I can't watch someone else leave!” Keith threw this out from his very center; the air reverberated from the confession, each word a new, hollow place left in the aftermath. What could fill it except more pain? “I already lost my dad--I made my mom leave, and now Shiro--I can't do it-- I can't--”

Lance grabbed him, fingers biting his jacket sleeves. “Keith,  _ Keith _ , listen to me--that isn't going to happen! It isn't  _ what  _ happened--”

For the second time, Keith shoved him back, this time as he turned around, snapping, “Yes it  _ will _ , I always mess up and you'll end up leaving too--”

Something wasn't right with his face. It was hard to see in the falling, moonless night, but the light from the distant porchlight glanced off things that, a moment ago, weren't there. 

Keith's eyes--the pupils had shrunk, slit-like, the sclera around pale, telling yellow. And his mouth--no, it was his  _ teeth _ \--

\--the top incisors swooned over his lower lip, tipped in thin, precise points.

Lance stared at him.

And then felt it: pain exploding through his stomach, worse than anything he'd ever known. He was being gutted from the inside, something feral trying to get out. It was--it was--

Keith went still.

All the times Lance felt Keith emotions, there was always something he couldn't name. Something too intense to place. Lance always supplied a reason for it, thought it was a fluke, or his mind being too overwhelmed trying to process everything else.

But it sang out now, clear as what Lance saw in front of him, though it didn't make sense: Keith was starving.

_ They were both starving _ .

Slowly, Keith reached up.

He touched his lips, his teeth--his  _ fang _ s? His eyes--those unsettling, unnatural,  _ beautiful  _ eyes--widened. Lance heard Keith’s small intake of breath; his small, whispered, “ _ No _ \--”

Thinking back on it, time didn't exist between then and when Keith fled. It happened seamlessly. The moment Keith breathed out that single word was the same moment he backpedaled and ran. Lance barely saw the movement, only the red-purple blur of Keith’s jacket, bleeding back into the trees.

That was Lance’s only hesitation. The time to blink. The time to process that Keith had been there and now was not and that the crashing through the forest was him running away. Another single second.

Lance didn’t need to think: His legs acted automatically. His feet took the same path Keith’s did. He whipped past the same tree trunks and bushes, caught the same branches and thorns along his arms. The light darkened to nearly nothing deeper in, and  _ still _ , Lance followed Keith the best he could, following the impressions of his frantic running, the muted sounds of his harsh breathing, all while screaming after him to  _ come back _ .

“Keith! Keith, stop!”

The forest took his words and held them.

It didn’t matter. Lance wouldn’t stop. He would use every ounce of sunlight he had left, and after that, he’d run blindly if he had to, stalking after the sharp pull of Keith’s agony alone.

Because, if he didn’t, if Keith got away, that would be it. Lance knew it like he knew that Keith was ripping himself apart at being found out. If Lance couldn’t talk to him one last time, Keith wouldn’t come back; he’d keep running until Indigo Pull spat him out, and he wouldn’t look back. 

A branch whipped Lance across the face. His feet tripped on roots and thicker tangles of underbrush. Ferns and the seasons’ final wildflowers snapped under his shoes. Something told him to bank left, and he banked left. The same instinct said forward, and forward he went. The trees were hulking black shadows without form, and more than once, Lance snagged the rough bark with his forearm or his shoulder, misjudging how close they were. This was a time when the trees could move around and not raise suspicion, and Lance believed they played tricks on him, to slow him down.

“Keith!” He waited for an answer that wouldn’t come. “Keith, please, wait! Come back!”

A flash of light flared up the landscape around him, suddenly and fierce. Lance made out the leaves underfoot, the bark of the tree closest to him, alive in detail--hyper-real--before it faded. 

Thunder called after it like a lost lover. It rumbled through the clouds, the forest, up Lance’s spine. It was the final encouragement the sky needed to split apart.

The rain broke, softly at first, sprinkling down on Lance’s head, whispering through the canopy above. Lance swore, loudly, to be heard, and strained to hear Keith still ahead, close and far, within reach and impossible to find. He ducked under a low-hanging branch before his forehead cracked against it. The wind made sure to kick at his back, urge him deeper and deeper in, further away from home.

“Keith, please,  _ KEITH _ \--”

Everything else drowned beneath the rainfall. It fell heavier and heavier. Lightning came again, and this time it blinded Lance as it bounced off the rainwater collecting on the ground. The world, for a single moment, was painted white-hot, and it became pitch black the moment after, when Lance’s eyes lost sight of the last dregs of twilight.

He stupidly kept going, not letting that small thing set him back.

He could still  _ feel _ Keith close-by, even if he couldn’t hear him over the rain. And he headed towards it, a moth to a flame, in hopeless, pleading faith.

There was no telling how far they’d run into the thicket, or in what direction, if they were closer to the road or closer to rounding back on the McClain’s land. Everything looked the same. In twilight, everything  _ was  _ the same. Lance wasn’t aware just how deep they were in, couldn’t  _ see it _ , until the sky flared up again, and in that honest second, saw the split in the earth as his feet pitched him toward it with no time to stop.

The ground ended.

It sloped down in ruin, tumbles of fine-milled soil washed out from years of heavy rain and flooding. Old trees had found their way to the bottom, some fifteen feet below, toppled off the edges during bad storms or the insistent press of time. Unearthed stones shone wetly, like teeth ready to bite.

Lance’s stomach flew up to the backs of his own teeth, punched past in a scream the thunder tried to hide.

Desperately, he turned and jerked out his arms, hooking his fingers in anything they could reach. Whip-like branches slit his palm open. His nails bent backwards as he clawed them through soil that broke apart the moment it was touched.

He fell, another stone, another tree for the gully to swallow.

And he would’ve been if gravity hadn’t turned backwards.

He flew up and back instead of forwards and down, like he was being thrown. Enough light lingered for Lance to understand the shape of the canopy above him, the backlit branches thin as spiderwebs. But it didn’t prepare him for when he struck solid ground seconds after, back slamming and skidding back, leaves coughing up around him from impact. The heady smell of them, mixed with the damp soil beneath, fanned out--and something else, something close, but more like pine.

It wasn’t until Keith yanked him up by the shirt collar that Lance understood what had happened.

He crouched over him, rain streaming through his hair, plastering it to the sides of his face. His violet eyes were wild, pupils thinner than before, like a cat’s, sharp as his teeth. Lance felt his shaking through his entire body.

“What the hell were you thinking!” Keith screamed it at him. “You could’ve--you almost--why didn’t you just stay away! Why didn’t you just let me go!”

Feeling Keith’s anger was better than having to deal with his own, sour fear--so Lance latched onto it, drew it into himself, to keep from thinking about what almost happened. What could’ve been, if Keith hadn’t reached him in time.

Lance grabbed Keith’s arms and pushed up on his elbows, bringing his face closer to Keith’s, yelling at him above the rain, “Because I don’t care! I don’t care what you think, Keith, I don’t care what you are--I didn’t want it to end like that!”

Keith jerked back, pulling Lance up with him. He shook him like he could rattle some sense into his head. “It almost ended with you at the bottom of that ditch! You almost--you nearly--don't you get that! You could have died!”

“But I didn’t,” Lance told him, yelling it back. “I didn’t, and it’s fine, stop tearing yourself apart over things that aren’t your fault!”

“It would have been! If you had died, it would’ve been  _ my fault, Lance! _ ”

The anger boiled and bubbled over. If the forest hadn’t been damp, if the rain didn’t fall down in torrents, it might’ve set the whole place on fire. It was too much for a single person to hold--but that didn’t stop Lance from grabbing onto it and stealing all of it as his own.

“No! It would’ve been  _ mine _ for running out in the dark,” Lance snapped. He let go of Keith’s hands, pushed up, shoving Keith away. Keith tumbled off of him, down to the grass, staring up at Lance blankly. “Will you stop it! Not everything is your fault, Keith! Stop blaming yourself for things you didn’t do!”

Keith continued to watch him, sprawled on the ground, his brow knitting up. “Did you--was that  _ you _ ?”

Lance didn’t understand how someone could go around with this much hate inside of them, this much anger, this much  _ pain _ . He vibrated with it. It nearly broke him in half. 

“How can you stand this,” Lance howled, and he grasped his own shirt--soaked through, heavy, sticking to him--and twisted his hands in the damp fabric. “How can you hate yourself  _ this much _ ?”

It was a form of torture Lance couldn’t take. He wanted it gone, all of it, and he did the only thing that made sense at the time--he drove his fists into the grass, pushed himself up from the mud, and turned to the closest thing within reach: An old tree, bowed from the rain, gnarled and bent as Lance felt.

Lance threw a punch at it, another, going until the feeling drained away and Keith came up behind him, pulling him back.

“Stop, Lance, you’re going to break your hands--”

“So  _ what _ ? Who cares?”

The rain filled the spaces around them and between them. It traced down their backs, flooded their hair, weighed their clothes down their shoulders. Keith watched him, seeing him when Lance could only see the impression of him, the faint catch of light in his strange-colored eyes. One of them reached forward, they both did, and their hands found each other in the shadows and light of the raging storm above.

“Please,  _ please _ , don’t leave. Talk to me first?” Lance threaded their fingers together. He stepped into Keith, drained and tired, his body as heavy as stones, and sank against Keith’s chest. “I don’t want you to go.”

Lance couldn’t feel anything from him. No emotion, not a whisper of how he may feel. Had he taken it all? Or was he too tired now to sense it? Was it both? Neither? Lance shut his eyes and listened to Keith’s ragged breathing, to the thunder drumming inside the clouds and Keith’s ribcage.

“. . .Not out here,” Keith finally answered. 

The wind rushed around them. Distantly, a branch snapped and fell. Leaves were torn from the trees, spat back down to earth. The storm ragged and worsened, second by second. As if thinking it gave it power, the clouds filled with more lightning, more thunder. It sounded like the sky planned to fall on their heads.

Keith squeezed Lance’s hands. 

“C’mon, follow me,” he shouted above the noise of it all. “It’s a little way off, but it’s closer than your house.”

Lance stumbled after him, clutching at Keith's hand. “What?”

“We’ll have to wait out the storm,” Keith explained, and pulled him along, running through the trees, weaving through them effortlessly.

“ _ Where?! _ ”

Keith glanced back at him. And, again, he squeezed Lance’s hand to reassure him. “Trust me.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Then come on.”

The storm pushed them forward, and they went, bolting like scared rabbits from the underbrush, Keith leading Lance by the hand the entire way, deeper and deeper into the forest.

_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Negativity is toxic no matter where it festers. It is something adept at seeping and infecting, poisoning and killing slowly. It needs a host to take it in, willing or not, and in the moment Lance threw his hands against the ground, the tree trunk, he forced every ounce of Keith’s anger into the grass, the wood.

Neither he nor Keith saw it, how could they in the rain or the dark?, but the effects were nearly immediate.

The grass browned and curled. The hearty oak tree blackened in the places Lance had touched, and it spread like a virus to the roots, the crown of October-colored leaves. The bark crumbled; the leaves sloughed off with the rain. And in the end, the mighty tree caved in on itself, hollowed like a gutted pumpkin left to rot after Halloween.

As Keith pulled Lance into the safety of a small, forgotten shack in the middle of the woods, the gentle sounds of the tree falling muddled in with cacophony of the raging storm, swallowed up and concealed.

They wouldn’t find the place again, where they nearly lost one another. The forest would secret it beneath the ruin the storm would leave behind, piles of leaves and debris. But eventually, someone would come across it, this circle of dead earth, and the story of it would be born.

Another rumor for Indigo Pull to nurture, the truth of it lost and retold.

All the same, this was the first ‘witch mark’ that appeared.

And it would not be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH BOY HERE IT IS
> 
> The Reveal!!
> 
> AKa probably my favorite scene in the whole fic, if I'm being honest.


	13. Chapter 13

It may have once been a storage shed for feed, or someone’s sad attempt at a single bedroom home, this place Keith took them to. It had a roof, a door, and a single window hidden behind several planks nailed haphazardly over the broken glass. It offered absolutely nothing in the terms of comfort besides the shelter from the rain, and barely that, with all the leaks and puddles seeping in from the loose siding and missing panels.

The floor was packed dirt, pounded flat by time and several years of moving feet, partially turned to mud now. Old, moth-devoured blankets occupied one corner. A few candles were scattered in off-handed places, by the walls, stashed in a corner, melted to stubs or thin, wax halos at the bottom of chipped jars. There wasn’t much besides that. A broken chair. A few empty sacks of deer corn or soil or something stashed in the crooked shelving on one wall. In the brief lightning flashes, Lance could only take in so much.

One thing stood out over all the rest--near the blankets, bouncing the light when it came, was a small picture frame. And next to that, a folded, neat pile of clothes, newer than the rest, an out-of-place blue.

Lance turned towards Keith. . .or where he thought he was. He’d stepped away and rummaged in the room, snatching up the candles. 

“What is this,” Lance asked, and he heard the rasp of his words as they scratched against the back of his throat. He coughed, trying to hide it, curled a hand around his neck. 

Keith kept quiet. He shuffled around some more, finding something, and then there came light, soft orange and flickering, spreading from a small circle of the candles Keith had prepared on the floor.

Rainwater rolled down his pale cheeks like tears. “. . .just, you know,” Keith began, casting around a glance, settling on the task in front of him. Lance saw the shadows dance at the base of his throat when he swallowed, everything carefully caressed in candlelight.

Lance stepped up to him. He squatted beside Keith, trailing the rain with him. It puddled at his feet, at Keith’s; together, they were a new storm that promised to flood the floor out of this little shack if they weren’t careful.

He may not know the full story, but Lance was starting to see the pieces come together. And for a fact, he knew those clothes in the corner where his--the pajamas Keith borrowed a few weeks ago.

“. . .is there where you’ve been holing up when you’re not at Pidge’s?” Lance asked him, as gently as he could.

Keith flinched back like he’d been hit. “No,” he told the flames between them. He wouldn’t meet Lance’s eye. “. . .it’s just a place I found.”

“Your things are here,” Lance pointed out.

“Who said they were mine?”

Lance got up. He went to the corner, crouched again, and took the clothes, the picture, brought them back. Keith turned away when he neared, to keep from getting caught looking.

The candles told the truth of the picture, painted another storm caught on film, and the family trapped inside the glass.

“That’s you,” Lance said, and softly touched Keith’s younger, smiling face. “And these are the clothes I lent you.”

Keith frowned, caved-in and fully sat down on the floor, back pressing against a wall. The wind whistled between any crack it could find, and it nudged past, flickering the flames and the curls of Keith’s sopping hair.

Without looking at him, Keith said, “I know. I told you they weren’t mine.”

“Fine then, smartass, then why are they  _ here _ ?” Lance dropped down beside him, the clothes on his opposite, placing the picture face-down on top of them to protect the glass. 

Keith didn’t say.

He didn't need to.

Lance turned his head. His body sank back against the wall and trembled from fatigue, from the cold starting to catch up with him. They were both a wreck. Even if Keith didn’t look over at him, Lance saw his teeth slipping over his lip, the strangeness of his eyes.

If Keith didn’t want to talk about staying in this tiny shed outside of his family’s land, fine. Lance could think of a hundred other things he wanted to talk about. 

He picked the most obvious one, the one (almost) starring him dead in the face.

“So, okay, this whole thing with your face--are you a. . .are you like a--what?” Lance knew a name for it, but the thought of it sounded wrong and silly. He said it anyway, because nothing else was as concise. “A. . .vampire?”

Keith’s shoulders tensed. He finally glanced over, and Lance had his first real chance to look at his eyes up close. They were startling, yes, but also breathtaking. Keith always had deep violet eyes, which was odd in itself, some High Hollywood actress genetics coming through. Now, with this sudden change, the pupils were splintered in nearly every color purple Lance could name, from lilac to indigo. Faceted, gem-like, and looking right back at him.

For a second.

Then Keith turned his head. His shoulders bowed further down.

Lance didn’t need his Empathy to know what it meant.

He watched Keith touch his mouth again, like he had what felt like hours ago, a fingertip rubbing down one of the fangs.

“. . .I don’t know. I think. . .I think so.”

Lance took his hand. “You can tell me,” he prompted. 

Keith frowned. After a second, he laced their fingers together. “. . .what do you want to know? There’s. . .there’s some bad stuff I can’t take back, Lance.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m not asking you to tell it if you’re not ready either. I just want to understand what I’m looking at. Which, hold on, by the way, because I haven’t had a chance to say so before, you know, with the storm and the whole nearly dying thing--but, Jesus, dude, your eyes are pretty.”

Keith snorted in his not-laughing-but-totally-laughing way. “I don’t think now’s the time to be saying stuff like that.”

“Sure it is. Honesty hour is every hour,” Lance quipped, already feeling better from hearing laughter creep into Keith’s voice. That little thing was a balm to his racing, aching heart. If he had the strength or the understanding, he would’ve poured that same feeling into Keith to heal him too. 

For now, Lance settled with their nearness, the contact of their clammy hands. As he started to wind down, he was beginning to notice that they hurt, and while Keith started saying something, Lance lifted them up to study in the light.

There were gashes in his one palm, where the branches flayed his hand, the skin flaking off around the edges. Old blood colored his hand in rust, smudged down to his wrist with mud from the floor. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, and whatever fresh blood had been there had been quickly washed away by the rain. It wasn’t pretty. The nails of his both his hands were broken, some bent way into the quick, some torn halfway down. No wonder they felt raw. His knuckles were pink, scraped and starting to swell.

Nothing could be done about it now.

And in light of what could’ve been, whether it ended with Keith devoured by distance or Lance dashed down at the bottom of the gully, these hurts were a small price to forfeit.

“. . .doesn’t this scare you? Don’t I. . .don’t  _ I _ scare you? Like this? Being  _ this _ ,” Keith asked him.

Lance curled his hand up and answered Keith, a few seconds behind. “Why would I be scared of you,” Lance asked back, a question for a question. 

Keith was looking at him. He’d seen his hands, the sorry state of them.

Lance kept on. He said, “If you wanted to hurt me, or kill me, you had plenty of time over the last couple of months to do that. And you haven’t. And I don’t think you would, anyway. So, what do I have to be scared of?” Lance looked at him, caught his fractured, violet eyes. “Except, maybe, falling off a cliff.”

Keith didn’t think that was funny. The look he shot him was daggers and pain, fearful and tight. Lance winced sympathetically.

“. . .thank you for that, by the way,” Lance murmured, soft as the dancing flames. “You saved me.”

Keith clenched his hand around his. “You’re an idiot,” he told him, which was fair, because Lance  _ was _ . “I’m just glad I. . .if I hadn’t, if you’d. . .” He couldn’t say it now, without anger to back it. It hung between them anyway, the ‘what-if’s and the ‘almost’s. So Keith trailed off, looked off, and sunk back against the wall.

“It’s okay. I didn’t. I’m right here.”

Thunder hurled itself against the shack. It shook the ground, vibrated through the framework, the wood quivering at their backs. Keith glanced up at the roof. Lance wondered if the whole thing would make it through the night, or if one huff or puff would send it crashing down on their heads.

If that was the plan, Lance at least wanted answers. He prompted, “Well. Go on. How did this all happen?” He really wanted to touch his face, examine the fangs, or look at his eyes again. But something held him back. What he’d said before, that he wasn’t worried Keith would hurt him, was true. But Lance had felt how deeply Keith resented himself, how much this part of him disgusted him. He had to respect that. “What does it mean?”

Keith chewed on what he wanted to say for such a long time, Lance thought he might’ve not asked those questions out loud. But as the storm breathed through the shack, just as heavy as when they’d been out in it, Keith finally confessed what he knew.

“I don’t. . .remember  _ how _ it happened, just when. I. . .I was in a bad place when my dad died. And I--I don’t know. I remember after the funeral, I just couldn’t stand being here anymore. Shiro and I were at the house, clearing things out, and I went. . .crazy. Started breaking things, whatever I could get my hands on. Shiro tried to calm me down, but I just ran off. I stole his car and went to the city and I don’t know what I thought I’d find there, but. . .” He lifted a shoulder. “. . .It’s vague. I know I got in a fist-fight with someone. There was an alleyway, neon lights and rain. . .and then I woke up in Shiro’s apartment to him and Adam arguing. About me, I think, I didn’t really hear them. . .”

Keith trailed off here.

Lance reminded him that he was there, rubbed his thumb in small, comforting circles over his knucklebones. He listened to Keith draw in a shuddering breath, and as he was about to tell him it was okay, that if it hurt, he could stop, Keith went on.

“That was the same night I. . .it’s weird to talk about. I’ve not. . . before,” Keith admitted. His eyes were focused on the candles, and only the candles. His mind was miles and miles away.

“. . .you’ve not told anyone?”

Keith grimaced. “Why would I?”

Lance watched the side of his face, listened to his tense breathing, and admitted, “I thought, I guess, I thought Shiro might--”

“No,” Keith stopped the thought from being spoken aloud. “I couldn’t. He already. . .I’ve already disappointed him enough. Why would I tell him I’m this. . . _ monster _ ?”

There it was, the heart of Keith’s pain. 

“You aren’t a monster, Keith.” Lance was on him at once. A monster wouldn’t jerk him back from tumbling to his death. A monster wouldn’t spend all night laughing over stupid movies. A monster wouldn’t still be holding his hand, clutched it so tightly Lance’s fingers were starting to go numb.

“Yes, I  _ am _ .” The final word dissolved, crumbled, and it was Lance who broke from hearing it. “I. . .I have to  _ kill _ things, Lance. Every story you’ve heard, it’s true. I can’t eat food--I tried and I just get sick, I can’t keep it down, it’s worse than any stomach virus I’ve ever had. The only thing is. . .I  _ need _ blood.”

If Keith expected Lance to flinch away, he didn’t. He remained right beside him, unmoving, as he would whatever else Keith confessed to him that night. Lance told him it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care what he was or what he’d done, and it was true. The proof was right there, locked between their hands.

Keith grit his teeth down. Shadows touched his jaw, the hollows of his cheeks. Lance shuddered. 

Lance didn’t want to ask, but curiosity urged him there, put the words on his tongue. “. . .have you ever--”

And Keith knew what he meant. “No. No, not that. Unless. . .unless I did the first night--and I think. . .I think I might have--but it’s only been animals. Cats, dogs, strays people wouldn’t miss.” His eyes flashed to Lance’s, and seeing them again made Lance draw in a breath. “I made sure.”

It explained why Keith was always hungry. Lance imagined it’d be like living off of scraps, for over a year, just to get by. “That’s why you’re starving,” Lance muttered, almost by accident, thinking out loud.

Keith’s brows dipped low over his eyes. “I--how do. . .you’ve done that before,” he said.

It was Lance’s turn. A confession for a confession. And Lance gave it willingly.

“Yeah. I’m still learning. It’s still pretty new stuff for me too.” Lance lifted a shoulder; his teeth started chattering. He ignored Keith’s worried look and went on, wanting Keith to know this part of him, to even out the secret with his own. “I can feel people's emotions and, I guess. . .I guess I can take them away too. I think that’s what I did earlier--I’m not really sure. That’s the first time I’ve done that. . .which, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Keith shook his head. “No, it’s. . .it’s not the first time.”

“Oh. Sorry, I shouldn’t--”

“No, wait, it wasn’t like that. More like. . .the blanket,” Keith told him.

To anyone else, it wouldn’t have made any sense. But Lance understood immediately. He hadn't stolen; he'd  _ comforted _ .

“Oh,” he said again, and this time, Lance looked at his own hand--the ruined one the forest tore to pieces. And Keith looked at it too, and saw Lance’s fingers shaking. It was hard to miss. As the adrenaline ebbed away, the heat from running through the forest left, the wet clothes on Lance’s back were draining the warmth right out of him.

Keith leaned over. He snatched up the pajamas he’d left here and pressed them into Lance’s hands. “Hold on. You’re freezing,” he said, like his own hands didn’t feel like ice. Maybe it was different for vampires. Maybe the cold didn’t bother them as much. “You should get out of those clothes.”

Lance grinned automatically. “Keith, if you wanted--”

Keith pressed a hand against his mouth. “Stop right there.”

How could Keith really think he was a monster?

Lance took the pajamas from him, and turned his face away. “No peeking,” he teased, which didn’t have the same effect coming past quivering lips as he wanted.

“I won’t,” Keith said in all seriousness and pointedly turned away.

There was no denying that changing into dry clothes felt way better than sitting in his rain-drenched ones. Luckily, these were fleece, and before Keith finished moving the blankets and sacks over to make up a dry place for them to sit, Lance felt warmer than he had all night.

“Good call,” he said, when they returned to their spot in front of the candle circle.

Keith brushed it off. In the short time it took Lance to change, Keith had shrugged off his jacket, and his socks and shoes. They were in the same corner Lance’s were, adding to the soping pile. In the candlelight, Keith's skin took on the orange-cast, and he looked nearly glowing and healthy again. If he didn’t wear the badges of his fangs and odd eyes on display, Lance might've been tricked.

It brought up something else. Lance broke the small silence to ask, “Why  _ do  _ you look like that?” Keith tilted his head like it was a funny question; Lance quickly waved his hand and pointed at his own mouth. “I mean, all that.”

Keith touched his lips. “Oh. It happens when I'm hungry. If I. . . It'll go away,” he admitted haltingly.

Like anything else, like Lance’s own gifts, this thing had its own rules.

“And you can’t go out in sunlight? But I've seen you out in the day before,” Lance pointed out. “. . .at the funeral. And in the mornings.”

“I can't go out in broad daylight. It burns me--”

“Like in movies when it's all hissing smoke and--”

Keith huffed out a breath. “ _ No _ , I don't turn to dust, Lance.” Laughter picked apart his letters, rounded the vowels in his mouth, made them soft and light. “I mean. . .it's the same if you burn your hand on a stovetop or in a fire. My skin blisters, and it hurts.” 

He paused a moment, then reached over, showing Lance his upper arm. He tapped a bubble of discoloration snaking up underneath his sleeve, a pink scar almost invisible in the dim light. 

“Like this,” he said.

Lance touched it where Keith touched it, and slipped his fingers further up, pushing the sleeve to his shoulder. The scar traveled up there and past it, and probably around to his back, where the shadows claimed it and hid it from sight.

“Oh, so it. . .okay.” He moved his hand away, and Keith pulled his sleeve down to cover it once more. “. . .what happened? I thought vampires had, like, super awesome healing?”

Keith shrugged. “It didn't take long to heal. Think a sunburn, but more painful. It cleared up after a few days, left this, and I've been careful ever since.” He didn't go into why he had it in the first place, and Lance didn’t press. 

“What else,” he asked. 

Keith glanced over at him, brow creased. “What? You want to know everything?” He sounded confused.

Lance nodded. “Why wouldn't I?”

“Because it's. . .I--”

“I told you before, Keith--I don't care. Haven't I made it clear?” Lance moved over, and, on impulse, suddenly found himself moving into Keith’s lap. The real shock was that Keith let him, that he stared up at in him naked surprise. 

Lance cupped the one good hand he had around Keith's face, tracing his thumb over his cheekbone. “Because if you need more convincing, we probably have all night.” The storm howled and heaved and pounded angry fists on the roof. “Yeah, we got a while.”

Keith pulled Lance's hand away. “I don't know. . .”

“I'll tell you all about me and my family as a compromise. I bet you have questions, too.”

“. . .I guess I do.”

And he did.

As they waited out the storm, the two exchanged questions and answers and told their stories, laid them out flat on the floor for the other to examine. Lance learned that Keith couldn't touch silver but could walk into a church just fine. He still had to breathe, his heart still beat--he wasn't like myths made vampires out to be, undead and brought back by dark magic. It was more like an illness, his skin prone to allergic reactions, and his cravings odd.

The one thing Keith couldn't explain was that he needed permission to enter houses.

“I tried,” Keith said. Lance sat beside him then, intently listening. “But it's like my body freezes. I can't do it.”

“Becoming a vampire gave you manners,” Lance teased. He was rewarded by a light punch tossed at his ribs. “Hey! I'm just calling it like I see it, okay!”

“I still can't believe you're making jokes about it. I really thought. . .”

“What, that'd I’d be running through the forest screaming my head off?”

Keith shrugged. “Close to that, yeah.”

“Please cut me at least a little slack, Keith, come on.” Even though that was exactly what got them here in the first place.

It wasn't until Lance told him when and how his Empathic powers started to develop that Keith stopped seeming so surprised. Actually, the tables flipped while Lance told him about seeing the ghost in the Holt's kitchen, the pair of white shoes walking across the floor. 

“. . .what did they look like,” Keith asked, midway through Lance's over-dramatic retelling. 

“What? I didn't see the guy's face, I said that.”

“No, I know, I meant the shoes.”

Lance arched a brow up but answered him to the best of his knowledge, down to the type of stitching on soles. When he'd finished, he expected some sort of reward, a  _ eureka!  _ moment where Keith pointed out something he and Hunk and Pidge had missed.

All he got was a tiny, “Oh,” and Keith's gentle silence.

Lance spoke of other things instead, of his family and their own gifts. Rachel's mind reading and Veronica's dreams. He told Keith of his mother and her healing hands, and he lifted his split palm as he said it, the candlelight washing over the scabbed ruin at its center, and promised, “She can fix this right up.”

If she didn't kill him first.

As the storm continued deeper into night, the more worried Lance became. His family didn't know he was out here, that he had stupidly, blindly (almost fatally) ran out in the middle of all this. His phone was up in his room. And, though Lance tried, he was sure screaming his thoughts as loud as possible wasn't enough for Rachel to hear. They were miles out--this was something Keith admitted, after he questioned the pained look on Lance's face. 

Pointlessly, Lance glanced out the boarded window, heart heavy in his chest. “. . .I hope this storm clears up soon,” he murmured, leaning against Keith, knees drawn up to his chest.

Keith glanced up at the ceiling, and together, they listened to the wind outside, the drumming thunder, the rain biblically flooding the entire world. No lie could control the weather, no amount of hopeful thinking or wishing could make the clouds to disperse. Keith wasn't the type to offer false hope--he was one to act and  _ make _ things happen and he wasn't tall enough to reach the sky.

The look he gave Lance, a mix of regret and apology, hurt to acknowledge. Since he ripped out Keith's anger, Lance hadn't been able to sense anything from him. Nothing bad, nothing good. It was like he didn't have his gift at all.

And Lance realized, right then, pressed hip-to-hip to Keith, that he actually missed it. Over the past month, it'd become so much a part of him that without it, it was similar to losing a hand or an entire leg. A part of him was gone.

Not knowing what Keith was feeling terrified him. 

Would it come back? Or had that one thing fried every ounce of magic pumping through Lance’s veins?

Because that was exactly what it felt like.

“. . .what’s wrong?”

Keith quiet voice sent shivers down his spine.

Lance sighed, lifted his hands, and rubbed at his eyes. “Nothing. . .sorry, it's just. . .today has been a long day.”

“Maybe you should get some rest,” Keith suggested.

It wasn't that bad of an idea.

“Will you wake me when the storm stops?”

Keith took his hand again and squeezed it. “Yeah.”

Lance shifted closer to him and leaned his head against Keith's shoulder, though instead of closing his eyes, he looked down at their hands. He stretched out his legs, mindful of the candles, relishing in the small warmth they pressed against his toes. 

For a long while, he simply stared at them, and listened to Keith's even, soft breathing, to the storm and the rush of rain and wind. He tried to listen in other ways, to feel and understand, to pry into Keith's heart, and felt only the memory of hunger and grief.

It was the candles Lance spoke to, some time later, when the idea trespassed from his mind to his lips, “Keith. . .if you wanted, I don't care if you. . .you know.”

Keith tensed. Hesitantly, he asked, “. . .what are you saying.”

“That I trust you.” Lance moved back, sat up to see his face better. Some of the candles had melted into puddles of wax on the floor; only a few remained lit, and their flames were dark orange and desperately blue against their wicks. 

Keith's eyes were on him, yellow and violet, violet and yellow. He told him, immediately, voice tight, “No.”

Lance touched his face. There was no urgency from him and, in fact, his fingers shook a little as he touched Keith's jaw. But he offered because he wanted to. Because Keith was sitting there, starving.

And wasn't that enough?

If it wasn't, as Lance slid his weight into Keith's lap, cradling his beautiful, perfect face between his hands, Lance told him, the candles, the softening storm, “Keith, you saved me.”

This was a night of confessions and trades and even exchanges. Lance knew Keith's secrets and Keith knew Lance's. They ran through the storm together. They huddled on the same hard dirt floor of this single-room shed or shack or hovel. 

Lance had stolen something of Keith's without thinking. Stolen it and made it vanish. Though it was anger, though it was several heavy stones of self-hate, they weren't Lance's to have.

Keith grit his teeth. The muscles along his jaw bounced under Lance's touch. Lance used this nearness as an excuse to study Keith's mouth, his sharp teeth, and of all the things he  _ should've  _ wondered, the only thing he could think of was how it must feel to kiss him now.

“That's what you think? That you  _ owe _ me?” There was bite to his words, a heat that crackled and snapped them apart. Still. Keith didn't toss Lance off, didn't push him away.

What did it mean that he pressed trembling hands to Lance's hips? What was hidden in Keith's hitching breath?

Lance slipped his hands up into Keith's hair. It was still damp, and the weight of it plus the rain curled it lovingly. Swirls stuck to his cheeks, little waves fell over both his ears. Under Lance’s hands, it twined around his knuckles, his fingers, like soft rope.

“I don't think  _ you _ think that,” Lance admitted. “I’m offering because. . .because I felt it, what it’s doing to you. What it’s  _ been _ doing to you.”

“I’ve never--” Keith wouldn't say it out loud.  _ I've never drank someone's blood _ . Only cats and dogs and rabbits jerked from their burrows. Anything to keep this part of him suppressed for as long as he could. “I don't want to hurt you, Lance.”

The way he said it--delicate as rose petals in the first frost of March--made Lance's heart squeeze tight.

Human or vampire or whatever thing in between, this was the same boy Lance had chased after for years. If he was starving, then he wanted to feed him. 

“You won't.”

Keith watched Lance pull off his shirt, followed the liquid way it dripped from Lance’s fingers to the floor, rainwater blue. It wasn't the first time they'd been in similar positions, Lance shirtless, Keith  _ looking _ at all the exposed, tan skin, from his hips to the hollow of his throat. The candlelight, the cool kiss of October on his back, Keith's gemstone eyes skimming up his torso--Lance felt everything slide and touch him like hands. He shivered. This was  _ more _ than any of the times before. Because now they knew each other deeper than nearly anyone else did.

His hands slid back into Keith's dark mane of hair, and Lance used that to his advantage, drew him in and met him, pressing his lips down the slightly crooked line of his nose. Another story to hear some day, how it got like that. Just like the scar on his chin that Lance kissed next. He could redraw Keith's whole face with his lips alone, and Keith would let him,  _ did _ let him, only moving to tilt his head this way or that to give Lance more room to work.

Keith's touch was ice cold, his fingertips barely skimming over his skin. It still threw off all the bells and whistles, made Lance make an unconscious noise in the back of his throat. They were so close. Hours ago, Lance thought he'd lost Keith forever, and now he was right here, pressed under his hands, his mouth.

It was Lance who moved back first. 

Keith was a ruin of parted lips and messy hair, his eyes half-lidded in the gloom.  _ That _ sent another thrill through him, flushed Lance warm and pink from ears to throat.

Slowly, Lance slid his fingers down his cheeks to his lips, thumbs rubbing down the crescent curves of his fangs.

And Keith let him.

He shut his eyes. He opened his mouth, and he let Lance touch them, examine them, and kiss over them.

It wasn't as bad as Lance thought. Keith was careful, slower, more deliberate with how he turned his head or shifted their mouths together. The one time Lance pressed his tongue against one--just to  _ feel _ it--Keith leaned away immediately, his hands leaping up to Lance's shoulders to prevent him from trying it again.

“ _ Lance _ \--” 

Really, it should be illegal to say his name like that. 

“Not fair,” Lance huffed. It took a small amount of control to keep from leaning into him anyway. He knotted his fingers into Keith's shirt, and glanced up at him, and,  _ Jesus _ , that was a mistake too. He covered Keith's eyes with his hands. “Not.  _ Fair _ .”

Keith snorted out a partial laugh. “What are you talking about? I'm not doing anything.”

“It's your face.”

“My face? My  _ face  _ isn’t fair?”

Lance bit his lip. “Not really. Not looking like  _ that _ and then looking at  _ me  _ like  _ that _ . I'm going to have to ask you to stop.”

“I can't help it?” Confusion colored Keith's tone. He moved Lance's hands back, and there was that same look, only softened, easier to digest. 

Lance breathed out a shaky breath. “That's it. I'm suing you for harassment. Expect a letter in the mail from my lawyer in five to ten business days.”

He didn't expect the sudden, bark of laughter Keith gifted him. It hit the walls, the low ceiling; it crowded the small space of the room like thunder from the storm. That single laugh poured right into Lance, and heated every inch of him up.

“You're incredible, you know that?” Keith grabbed Lance's face, and before Lance could stammer out a surprised response, he kissed him.

When they parted, Lance, with his hands sunk in Keith's hair, murmured, “One of my special talents,” even though he didn't believe him.

It made Keith smile all the same, and Lance pulled him close, tucked Keith's head under his chin, and slipped his arms around his back. They stayed like that for a while, with the rain hissing overhead and the candles slowly dying, one by one.

“. . .I meant it,” Lance said after a time. He smoothed his fingers back through Keith's hair again, pushing it back from his face. “If you want to, I trust you.” They were in the perfect spot for it. Lance unconsciously lifted his shoulder.

He heard Keith take a breath, felt his lips open--then he leaned away, pressed flush against the wall, eyes dark in the shadow cast from his brow. Lance could barely see him now. The little candlelight remaining chose other places to touch, like down his nose, the silver slip of one of those fangs.

“I told you, Lance--”

“And I told  _ you _ that I trust you. I’ve felt what you've felt, Keith, your hunger is tearing you apart.”

Keith stilled. “. . .you meant that?”

“Which part?”

“. . .all of it but mostly the last bit.”

“Yes. To all of it. Mostly the last bit.”

Keith still seemed unsure. He said, “Aren’t you worried? What if I don't stop and you. . . What if I  _ hurt _ you. . . or  _ worse _ ?”

“How many ways can I say it? Would Spanish do? I can say it in Spanish.”

Keith gave him a look. “Lance. . .”

Lance squeezed his face between his hands. “This thing. . .you being a vampire, okay, so what? It’s weird. It's a little scary. But I'm not exactly normal either. This whole psychic bloodline thing--that's just as weird and scary. And it's taken me time to figure it out, and I  _ still _ don't know what the hell I'm doing. Today I accidentally made everyone around me sad and mopey because that was how _ I  _ was feeling. And then, with you, I. . .” Lance made a clawing gesture with one hand, and winced. “I ripped all of that out of you. Anger, hate, all of it. And it wasn’t like I meant to do that either. It just  _ happened _ . . .”

Those violet eyes were turned up expectantly, scanning over Lance’s face as he talked. Lance brushed his thumbs beneath them, touching the dark marks, painting them anew. 

“What are you saying, Lance,” Keith asked him, in the tiny place Lance hesitated.

Lance slid his hands down to Keith’s shoulders, where they rose and fell with his breathing. “I’m saying that we both have to figure out what we’re doing, what we  _ are _ . And you know what? We’ll figure it out together.”

That was the point, wasn’t it? 

Change the setting, and this wasn’t much different than when they left the diner. This dark shack could be any street in Indigo Pull. They spoke of similar things then, had the roles reversed, with Lance unsure and scared and Keith the one resolute and determined. 

_ I can’t answer you _ , Keith had said, and he took his hands for all the stars to witness.  _ But we can figure it out together _ .

Their feelings, this relationship, and everything it became. Who they were,  _ what _ they were--it was all bundled in the contract they made that night, sealed with their first kiss under the clear, night sky.

Lance wasn’t alone thinking it, either. 

Keith’s widening eyes gave him away. The stutter in his breathing, the raging pulse tucked against Lance’s fingertips. It finally helped Keith understand where Lance was coming from, why he insisted, why it meant so much to him.

Just like Keith’s busted knuckles, his pain and grieving and his consuming anger--that hunger had been  _ his own _ . Lance had felt it just as badly, and he knew it wasn’t going away, not if Keith starved himself day after day, ignored what he needed. What he  _ was _ .

One day, it wouldn’t be enough.

One day, it could lead to something Keith couldn’t control, push him down the exact path that horrified him.

Lance watched Keith process this all on his own, felt him press his steady hands against his back. All the words they could say had been said. There was nothing else but  _ this _ , just him and Keith, and the wind and the rain, distant now, forgotten, moving on.

He wasn’t surprised when Keith moved, or at the soft kisses he pressed against his throat. What  _ did _ was Keith asking, “Can you do that again? If I. . .go to far?”

Honestly, Lance wasn’t sure. He didn’t know how he did it in the first place, only vaguely recalled how he latched and yanked and drew it all in. Or, even, if he could now, without being able to sense Keith’s emotions.

His trust was solid, though. Unshakeable. Not in himself, but in Keith.

So Lance told him, “Yes,” without hesitation.

Keith leaned into him, and, before he did anything else, he kissed the word right from his mouth. Again, Lance wondered at how Keith could think so lowly of himself, believe he was nothing more than a monster.

Reaching up, Keith grabbed one of Lance’s arms. He slipped his fingers over Lance’s hand, traced across his knuckles, the thin scratches the forest gave him. Under his careful attention, Keith mapped his entire arm from hand to shoulder, all the way up to his throat. Lance tilted his head automatically, but Keith shook his head. His brows lowered again, eyes intense and focused, mouth set in a line.

In the end, Keith pulled his arm forward, and with a gentle twist, turned Lance’s wrist up. He pressed a kiss there, too, against the network of blue veins hatched just under his skin. All the tender attention flushed right through Lance. 

Lance watched Keith part his mouth, those fangs slide out and forward. He sucked in a breath. The second kiss Keith touched to his skin wasn’t a kiss at all--it was two pricks of pain, quickly swallowed up and misplaced.

Keith’s reaction was instant. He rocked forward, his fingers squeezed around Lance’s arm, then let go, then held him more gently. Lance could feel his mouth shift over his skin, the tender swipes of his tongue that, really, shouldn’t have had  _ that _ effect on him, but did anyway. It was as passionate as kissing. It dizzied the two of them, made Lance press his arm up towards Keith’s mouth to keep him from stopping, made them both draw in shaky breaths and heave out shivering sighs.

At a point, Lance realized he could move his other arm. He didn’t know why it occurred to him so late, if maybe he’d been so preoccupied with everything else that it sailed overhead. But it was a new type of intimacy to push Keith’s hair back, card through it, hold it back from his face. Keith seemed to remember he was there, and he cut those violet eyes up towards his. Seeing them knocked Lance hard in the chest. 

They were brighter, the yellow almost glowing. The purple of his irises were verging on a color Lance didn’t know a name for. And the way they were narrowed, half-lidded--Lance couldn’t look at them. 

He pressed his face to the top of Keith’s head to hide his face and the blush burning across his cheeks.

It only took a few minutes, and then it was over.

Keith ran one, final lick against the inside of Lance’s wrist, and gently drew back. He was breathing hard, harder than Lance, the force of it rocked both of them, swayed them in its rhythm. Lance sat back, though he didn’t want to, and looked at Keith’s face--a mistake--then down at his own wrist.

From far away, Keith muttered something about bandages.

But it was unnecessary.

As Lance turned his wrist towards the last light from the candles, he saw the wonder of what happened in real time. His skin knit and reformed, the two spots where Keith’s fangs had bit healing over in a fraction of a second. Lance almost blinked and missed it. 

The real gore lay beneath the surface. His skin darkened, bloomed around where those marks had been, bruising impressively.

Lance dropped his wrist before Keith could see.

All-in-all, it wasn’t as bloody as movies made it out to be. The thought amused him, and he told Keith, and witnessed the slow smile raising up Keith’s mouth, starting at the corners. It’s when Lance noticed Keith’s fangs were gone, that his eyes seemed normal now, too.

“Oh, hey, you’re back, incognito,” Lance quipped.

Keith breathed out a laugh. His hands were all over him again--warmer, now, Lance realized. “I told you.”

“And I told  _ you _ ,” Lance pointed out. “See? I knew it. I didn’t even need to use my superpowers, or whatever.”

“. . .I guess so. Do you feel okay? Not like--I don’t. . .even know what I’m asking,” Keith muttered, trailing off near the end, like he was embarrassed, ashamed.

Lance could only guess. “I feel fine,” he admitted, batting his hand. “Okay, maybe a  _ little _ dizzy and light-headed. But not ‘threatening to collapse from blood loss’ kind of levels.”

That joke didn’t go over so well. The amusement started to wane as Keith realized what he’d done, what  _ they _ had done. Lance heard his breath, and he quickly pressed his hand over Keith’s mouth, before he could say something stupid.

“Don’t,” he warned. “I promise. You know me, Keith, if I didn’t feel at least 90 percent okay, I’d let you know.”

Keith hummed behind his hand, drew it back, but what he said didn’t follow the train of their conversation, “The storm’s stopped.”

And, like magic, Lance heard the silence it left behind, suddenly and all at once. He looked up at the dripping ceiling, then cast his eyes over to where he remembered the window being, the door, and, no, Keith was right. The thunder was quiet. The rain, missing. When had that happened?

Relief flooded through him.

Lance picked his shirt up off the floor and pulled it on. With Keith’s help, he got to his feet--and  _ that _ hit him suddenly and all at once, too, a wash of vertigo that pitched him to the floor. Keith grabbed him by the arms and was the only reason Lance didn’t meet the dirt floor and glass jars more intimately.

“Oh, okay, yeah. There it is.” There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears, a throbbing pressure in his head. “Nope, standing is not a thing right now. Let me down.”

Keith eased him back on the floor. “I knew it, I--”

Lance slapped his shoulder. “I’m going to need you to shut up for three seconds, Keith, please--” 

He tucked his face between his knees, pressed his hands over his eyes. He was shaking. His stomach knotted itself tight, his head swam, and even sitting back flush against the wall, the world still turned a little too quickly, and Lance was a little too attuned to it. Maybe Keith  _ did _ go to far. Bile surged up the back of his throat.

Like his battered hands, there was no helping it now. All he could do was sit and wait until it passed, and then hope he could manage the walk home. Lance knew, above anything else, that once he made it back, everything would be okay.

Keith kneeled in front of him, and this time, it was his hands that slid back through Lance’s hair. He was a little awkward and clumsy with his touches, his uncertainty mirrored in the jerking, shaking way he pushed and pressed. There was nervousness stitched right into his fingertips.

But it made Lance smile all the same.

They waited like that for several minutes, until Lance was sure he could stand on his feet and not make a fool of himself again. Keith was there anyway, either ignoring Lance’s bravado or seeing right through it, his arms curled around Lance’s waist. Keith toed out the final flames, and Lance started to go grab their things.

Keith drew him back. “Leave them. I’ll get them later.”

Lance didn’t feel like arguing.

The storm had been worse than it sounded--and it had sounded  _ bad _ .

Dawn peeked barely over the hills. A half-moon perched near the horizon shed some light to see by. Its silver light painted the ruin like a crime scene, spilled over torn branches and crooked trees. The ground was slick in rainwater and leaves. Most trees were stripped clean, the wind and rain tearing apart what autumn would’ve let slowly happen. 

In an odd way, it was almost beautiful, like Keith and Lance stepped out into someplace new. All the familiar things were there, sure, but they’d been shaken up so much that the forest didn’t seem like the same forest from Lance’s memories. It  _ wasn’t _ . Everything the moonlight touched that night had been changed, in some way or another.

Crossing through the woods took hours. Or what felt like hours. Night and dawn battled over them, dull, blue sunlight at one end of the world, the gentle white glow of the moon at the other. Stars peeked from behind what small scattering of clouds remained, and they winked down at them like they knew their secret.

Keith knew the way back despite the fallen trees and newly formed streams obscuring their path. He led them carefully around anything that tried to hold them back, all while keeping a firm arm around Lance’s middle, just in case.

Lance tried to protest only once, but Keith gave him a look that shut him up.

Just as he was getting tired and winded again, that dizziness surging back, Keith pointed towards the treeline and, more near than far, the small star of a porch light beamed a few yards away.

_ Finally _ .

They stumbled up the porch steps together minutes later, and before either one of them could reach out to open the door, it flew open on its own with a  _ bang! _

Maria McClain filled the doorway--and Lance’s  _ papá _ , his sisters, his brothers, everyone pushed and rushed forward onto the porch.

“Where  _ were _ you, out in that weather, Lance, I swear if you  _ ever _ \--”

“Son, you gave us all a fright, if Rachel hadn’t--”

“You didn’t have to call so  _ loud _ , you know, I knew you were doing something stupid when you left, but, hello? Why the hell did you go  _ chasing _ \--”

“We’re glad you’re okay, well, mostly okay--”

Keith stepped away when it became evident several other sets of hands wanted and would hold Lance up. They were all a mix of worried and angry and relieved. Lance was smothered in it, in their voices, their touches, their tears.

His  _ mamá _ was the worst of all. Her anger, strongest; her concern, fiercest; her words, loudest and a blur of Spanish-to-English-to-Spanish again. It made Lance’s head hurt to keep up with it. Keith, a step back on the porch, watching this all go on, had no idea if what he heard  _ were _ words or just senseless jarble. 

All the anger in the world couldn’t keep Maria McClain from scooping her son up in her arms. The wash of her healing ran over him at once, warm as a fireside, sweet as waking to the smell of cookies baking in the kitchen. The ache of his hands fled, the pressure in his head lessened. The dizziness that’d haunted each step since the shack dissolved into nothing. Lance stood better, breathed better, and thought a little clearer. 

He cut a glance over to Rachel, his eyes wide with worry.

Out of any of them, she’d know what happened. And by the look on her face, she  _ did _ know. Everything Lance did, the thoughts that flickered through his mind when he realized, registered on her own face. And silently he pleaded with her,  _ don’t tell them. _

Rachel clenched her jaw and turned her head away. She wouldn’t tell, though, and Lance made a note to thank her for it properly, when they could spare a moment alone. He told her in the way she could hear then, even amongst the loud noise of their family standing around them.

And he heard, a single thought running between his ears,  _ You’re an idiot, and I hope you know it _ , fashioned in Rachel’s snappy tone.

Level Two, as Hunk called it, as Lance was starting to realize. These were things that could grow and change, and disappear, if overused. Rachel nodded once, confirming those ideas.

“ _ Mijo _ , you go upstairs right now and get cleaned up.” His  _ mamá _ leaned back, her hands lingering on his shoulders; that warmth rolled over him, easing aches and hurts Lance only knew he had once they were gone. “And you better  _ never _ do that again, do you hear me? I called all over Indigo Pull trying to find you, you know, until Rachel told me that you’d lost your damn mind and ran headlong into the storm! What were you thinking!”

Lance winced. He opened his mouth. His mother shook her head once.

“No arguing. You, go on. You’re grounded, by the way,” she said.

Nothing could shut him up after that. “But  _ mom! _ Listen, it was a matter of--”

“What did I just say? Go on, inside, right now!” She used her advantage of her hold against him, sidestepped out of the line of the door, and pushed him inside. Turning back, she snapped a finger out at Keith, and Lance caught the delicate way he flinched in surprise. “And you, Keith--”

Keith lightly touched his chest. His eyes were wide. “I--”

She stepped over to him and yanked him up. The hug was sudden and quick, pinned Keith’s arms to his sides and shoved the air right out of him. He glanced over at Lance, brow knit, and Lance shrugged.

“Thank you,” Lance’s mother said, and her sincerity lay heavy in those two words. “For bringing him back home.”

Lance caught the shine over Keith’s eyes, saw the twist of his mouth. And he knew that look even if he couldn’t feel it himself. 

“I promise I was okay,  _ mamá _ ,” Lance said from the door, looking from Keith to the back of his mother’s head. It was a partial truth, and only Rachel and Keith knew it, if his siblings didn’t look too closely at his hands. His mother healed everything except the missing nails--and the bruise at his wrist, for some reason. Lance tucked it in the shadow of his side to keep it hidden. “I’m always careful.”

“You’re a liar and still grounded,  _ hijo _ , go on.” She turned and, with the help of her children, pushed Lance further inside.

Lance snagged one final look at Keith over the bobs and dips of his family’s shoulders, and managed a small wave, a little flutter of his fingers that Keith returned. 

By the time Lance ‘got cleaned up’--showered, changed, the like--dawn puddled on his bedroom floor, dreamy violet. Weariness sagged his shoulders, burned his eyes. The day had existed twofold, and the exhaustion it gifted him was unwelcomed and demanding. 

There were a few things he needed to do before he could rest. The first was he looked down at his wrist again, examining it under true light. Bright blue bruises cuffed his wrist, darkened in the center to a near purple-black. When Lance tapped it, it hurt, but dully. From his mother’s magic, he assumed, or from whatever Keith did to seal the wound in the first place. More magic, a different kind of magic, maybe. A reaction.

Lance let his arm fall. It didn’t matter. 

Leaning forward, he caught his phone in his fingers and pulled up the group chat between his friends. They might be sleeping, and would’ve surely been, any other day. But last night was not like other nights, and he needed to apologize to them for scaring them, yet again. For all his lying, Lance’s behavior  _ was _ reckless. He nearly died for it, for a boy with eyes like deep midnight and the way looking at them made him feel. 

The sad thing was, Lance knew he’d do it again, if that’s what it took.

The clock in the right-hand corner of the screen confessed the early morning time of barely seven a.m. 

Hoping for the best--and expecting little from it because, really, did he deserve it?--Lance woke his friends up with a call to let them know that, despite everything, every stupid thing he’d done, he was alright.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Caught up in the hurried way his family carted him back inside the house, his mother ranting in his ear the entire way up to the small, upstairs bathroom, Lance didn’t see Rachel stay behind on the porch. With Keith. She planned it on purpose, slipped and stepped out of the line of fire to keep from being seen, though, of course, Veronica looked over at her, skeptical as always.

Rachel couldn’t hold on to her annoyance. When they discovered Lance missing during the worst of the storm, Rachel had heard the inner battle V wagged with herself. She saw her sister’s broken dreams, their loose predictions, places and times further ahead than now. Sunny days and sunsets broken over the rushing river. A time of deep, blue-white snow around Christmas, strings of colorful lights twined around a tree peeked at the corner of a window. Nothing about any wild storms. Nothing about Lance or Lance missing.

Veronica blamed herself, her gift, how useless it turned out to be. Who cared about what the weather would be like next Thursday? Or how Rachel’s date would end up leaving her in the middle of dinner? The handful of times it proved useful--the gentle way it foretold Lance developing his own gifts or eased the scare from the one time their  _ abuela  _ collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital--were scarce. 

Really, none of these gifts  _ were _ gifts, if you asked Rachel. They were curses dressed in pretty ribbons to distract the eye.

Keith hadn’t moved from the top step. He watched her carefully, his hands softly folded into fists at his sides. 

Now  _ here _ was a curse, another example of how well it could hide in plain sight.

Rachel knew it the first time she peeked into his head. The thoughts ricocheting inside-- _ everything _ about this boy was wild and barely contained. 

Tonight he was calmer, more at ease, and Rachel knew the reason for that too. She heard it twice, in Lance’s pleading and Keith’s realization that any secret he once had was hers now.

She stepped up to him. 

Keith didn’t move back.

“Okay, listen here, I’ll be quick.” Rachel poked him in the chest, leaned the advantage of her height-in-heels over him, casting her shadow over the frown he answered her with. “If you hurt him, I’ll stake you myself.”

He answered her at once. “I’m not going to hurt him.” Honest. True.

Good.

Rachel pressed her hands at her hips, arms akimbo, glaring down at him. Keith mirrored it back. His resolve was impressive--as were the whispers of affection for Lance threaded throughout his thoughts. Again, these were honest. Truthful. 

“You better not. Or you’ll have the whole town going after you. And, no, because you know as well as I do that I can hear you--they don’t know. Just Lance and me. So step carefully, you understand me?” She reached out and stabbed him in the shoulder with a pointed nail. “Because I  _ will _ tell them.”

Keith scowled at her. “Why are you threatening me if you know what I’m thinking? I’m not going to hurt him. I wouldn’t--”

“You  _ could’ve _ ,” she hissed. “You bit him when you don’t even know how  _ you _ turned. What if you did the same thing to him? What if one bite was all it took?”

Realization dawned on Keith’s face. It rose like the actual sun behind him, brilliant and with a sick clarity. Keith rocked on his feet, unconsciously took a step back.

She wasn’t Lance--Rachel dealt only in thoughts. But sometimes a strong enough feeling could flee the heart and enter the mind. It was rare for her to chance to hear it, especially one that sang out like that, crystal clear.

“I didn’t--” Keith pressed his knuckles to his mouth. He tried to look at her but couldn’t, and looked instead towards the door behind her, his eyes bright with worry. “I  _ didn _ ’ _ t _ \--”

“No,” Rachel admitted. “You didn’t. I don’t know anything about vampires, I’ll be honest, but there’s a big rule of thumb that says ‘if you’re bitten by one you become one’. And I know for a fact my dumbass little brother wasn’t thinking about that when the two of you were alone. Sometimes he  _ doesn’t _ think. He’s always been like that. He wants to martyr and help people because he loves them and can’t stand for them to hurt.”

Keith’s eyes snapped to hers. She heard him repeat what she said in his head, confusion penned down in each letter.

She stabbed him again to regain his focus. “We love him, Keith. And I get it, I know what the two of you are doing, what’s going to happen. Only an idiot couldn’t. So be careful. Don’t fuck around. Don’t  _ hurt him _ . The next time you slip up will be your last time.”

Rachel didn’t wait for Keith to respond. She knew he wouldn’t. What she said sunk deep, hooked around his thoughts like barbed wire, painful and sharp. 

And that’s how she left him, rooted to the spot, with the new morning advancing behind him one pale color at a time.


	14. Chapter 14

Hunk and Pidge carried their pain and disappointment around for days. Lance wasn’t used to that, and, if he was honest with himself, it hurt more than his hands had the night of the storm. At least Hunk wasn’t vocal about his. Pidge, on the other hand, snapped at Lance more than usual, his responses clipped and deliberate, verbal gunshots. Every time Lance tried to pull him aside to talk with him, to calm him down and  _ explain _ , Pidge shouldered away from him and had nothing to do with it.

It brought up the sour points Hunk made and continued to make, as the days stretched headlong into one brutal week. But anytime Lance asked Pidge over, he refused, and Lance knew better than to go over the Holt’s to talk. There was a wall between them, stubbornly immovable, an ugly thing pushing them apart.

He was grateful (and lucky) Hunk forgave so easily, even if the newfound trepidation he felt was entirely Lance’s fault. 

Apparently, the night Lance went ‘missing’, his  _ mamá  _ really had called most of the town. Half-friends ran up to him in the hallways between classes to tell him all about it or to express they were glad he was alright. Even Allura met up with him at his locker and looked visibly relieved to find him there. 

But, of course, that meant Hunk and Pidge had been called first, after his family discovered Lance’s phone left behind in his room. The more time Lance spent thinking on it, the worse it looked from the outside. Iverson had  _ just been over _ with more evidence for Adam’s investigation, and there he goes, shooting off after Keith without a second thought, with a killer still on the loose.

Lance knew that was the reason Pidge resented him and refused to listen. This wasn’t the first time they had a falling out. Their personalities clashed sometimes, and they were both stubborn-footed at best. By the third time Pidge blatantly ignored his attempts to smooth things over, Lance was tired of it and done. Hunk had to remind him they were all worried--he  _ had _ been missing for nearly ten hours, during a hell of a storm with record wind damage--what else did Lance expect?

All-in-all, Lance found himself suddenly in a very bad spot.

Hunk offered what he could--which, as always, was more than enough and  _ then _ some. He talked to him, answered his messages, and tried more than once to come over and hang out. But Lance’s mother always shooed him away, firmly but gently, reminding the two of them Lance was grounded for the foreseeable future.

It took two days for Lance’s gift to come back, and since then, all the negative feelings  _ he _ caused were front-and-center. From his friends. From his family. It was part of his punishment for being so stupid, even if it wasn’t one of the terms his mother set. Those, in comparison, were easier to handle. Extra chores around the farm. Dishes duty every night for a month. And no visitors until further notice.

The last was delicately worded to include Keith. His family  _ was _ grateful for Keith lugging him back home, but they also knew how much he and Lance had been spending time together, how much Lance looked  _ forward _ to it, so his mother took that away too. To make her point. Like Lance needed another way to feel awful about the whole ordeal.

It wasn’t even like Keith had come around since that night. It was like he knew better, too, though Lance worried it was for another reason. Something  _ worse _ \--something he refused to think on it. 

Lance busied himself in the routine of school and his chores, passing the days with Hunk’s generous affection as his backdrop from going completely bonkers waiting on Pidge to talk to him or for Keith to show up again. If it wasn’t for him, Lance doubted he’d have made it.

One good thing that came from all the bad was Lance had more time to finish his schoolwork. Without any distractions--except  _ missing _ those distractions--Lance poured himself as much as he could into his studies. He finished more homework, turned in at least one paper on time, and passed a math quiz practically all on his own (though Hunk looked over his study sheet for him the class before to point out mistakes, bless him).

For a solid week, that was Lance McClain’s life.

And the following Monday, he was absolutely, entirely, one hundred percent sick of it.

The one thing his mother allowed was the commute to and from school. This Monday was no different: Lance met Hunk at his house and the two walked up the hill to Lion Castle and Allura, and the three of them snagged Pidge at the front of his gated fence. Hunk played moderator, and Allura made it a point to speak to everyone in equal amounts, the true neutral party in all this mess.

Pidge had his phone jammed nearly up his nose, as usual, and hadn’t said much of anything to anyone.

Lance was tired. Pidge hadn’t looked over at him once, which, shocker, because he’d been doing  _ that  _ on-and-off since last week.

He hated it. And he hated the spike of anxiety Pidge felt whenever Lance came too close, old and new fears blazing inside him.

It took one, carefully timed step for Lance to cut in front of Pidge’s path. One step for Pidge to slam up against Lance’s chest. And one, single second for Lance’s arms to fall around him and snatch him up.

Allura and Hunk watched him do it, and they faltered and exchanged quick glances between them.

Pidge’s spine straightened like Lance’s hands were made from electricity. “What the  _ hell _ , Lance, let me go--” He pushed his hands against Lance’s chest--pushed and  _ punched _ . Those knuckles of his struck like knives against his ribcage.

“ _ Ow _ , no, stop it! Let me talk, damnit!” Lance retaliated and squeezed Pidge harder, pinning his mean, little hands against him. “I hate this, Pidge, I hate it and I’m sorry, please, for two goddamn minutes,  _ let me talk to you _ !”

“Guys! Guys, not now, stop,  _ stop _ ! You two are literally standing in the middle of the road!” Hunk came up, his hands lifted, and finally just pressed them against his eyes instead of either of them. “Why do you two want to do this  _ now _ ?”

“I  _ don’t _ want to! Tell Lance to leave me alone!”

“It won’t get better unless you talk to me! I know I screwed up, Pidge, I  _ know _ I’m this big, stupid idiot, okay? I just want two minutes!”

Lance hoped it would be enough. But Pidge was  _ Pidge _ and he was  _ pissed _ and hurt and scared. It blistered over everything else he felt--but not enough to cover that he missed Lance just as much as Lance missed him. Maybe more.

Maybe  _ worse _ .

“No! I don’t want to, get  _ off of me _ ! I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, got it? Can’t you get that through your thick skull for once?” Pidge stamped down a foot, right over Lance’s toes.

He yelped; he jerked his arms away and Pidge pushed him, shoved every ounce of his weight against Lance’s chest.

Lance staggered, tripping over the backs of his own feet. And he fell flat on his ass, all three of his friends staring him down. 

Hunk threw his hands up. He whirled on Pidge. “Seriously, Pidge!”

Allura stepped around the other two and offered Lance her hand. “Honestly, what’s gotten into you two recently? I’ve never seen you fight like this.”

Because they normally  _ didn’t  _ fight like this. This was something new, born from letting all those bad things fester and grow over the last few days. Lance’s pain read on his face, flayed and open. Even Pidge saw it and acknowledged it by turning his head. His hands were clenched by his sides and shaking. His hazel eyes glassed over.

Lance pushed himself up on his own, ignoring Allura’s hand. He dusted the backs of his jeans off while Allura stood beside him, watching him with her candy blue eyes and her quiet concern. Hunk stood by Pidge, and when Lance glanced over at him, caught him dragging his hands down his face in distress.

Lance didn’t look at Pidge when he said, “Fine, read loud and clear,” but it struck his target nonetheless.

Shame ballooned up, all Pidge’s design.

Lance could read every one of the emotions flitting through the air, could touch them and name them and tell you from which person they’d come from. All the worry and all the hurt and all the sadness--Lance saw them from each of his friends. . .but didn’t they see that he’d been shouldering the same pain just as long as they had?

Hunk tried. Hunk always tried. He tried  _ now _ , his attention split between Pidge and now Lance, his hands working in the air like he could stitch their friendship back together with his fingers. His words filled the valley, “No. No no no, guys,  _ please _ , can’t we just all agree we all screwed up? Lance, sorry buddy, but you  _ were _ stupid, running off like that. You scared us really bad. We thought--you know--but, like--I get it. I know why you did it. Pidge knows it too. And Pidge, you need to chill. I get that too, I get being all angry and worked-up about this because, hello, that night? I was too. We were worried, I guess we  _ still _ are, but that doesn’t mean you have to take it out on Lance. He’s  _ sorry _ , can’t you see that? Can’t you two just sit down and talk,  _ please _ . I don’t know about you two, but I’m sick of this. I’m sick of all this half-said stuff. It’s hurting all of us.” Hunk looked over at Lance when he said that; Lance had to stare down at his feet. “We’re better than this, guys.”

The thing was, Lance  _ had _ tried. He tried every day, numerous times, and it was Pidge who pushed away.

Lance figured he needed time, sure, but just how much? Just how long were they going to do this? How deep did their friendship need to be severed before Pidge finally gave in and let it heal?

Hunk lifted his hand between them, curled into a delicate fist.

“Remember? We’re all in this together.”

_ Together _ .

Lance heard Pidge make a small, unhappy whine, and glanced over at him as Pidge lifted his hand. Pidge hesitated, his eyes still shining and bright. He actually  _ looked _ at Lance, turned all that pain towards him, and lightly bumped Hunk’s knuckles with his own. Held it. Waited on Lance to finish the ritual.

This wouldn’t fix anything.

“Sure we are,” Lance told them all, even Allura, standing beside him still, quietly watching this all unfold. “Whatever you say, buddy.”

But he didn’t put his hand in with the rest.

Instead, he turned, shifted the weight of his bag against his back, and stalked off in the opposite direction, heading back up the hill towards the Holt’s, the graveyard--the way back home--each step one more between school and the knot of his friends standing in the street.

Hunk called after him to come back. Allura pitched out his name. Pidge said nothing.

Lance left them there, put more and more distance between them, practically up the slope of the hill, the scenery a green blur to either side. 

When he reached the graveyard a few minutes later, Lance jerked off his backpack and hurled it against the small, stone wall. He folded his hands into shaking fists--belatedly--and scored them across his eyes in shaking swipes, pressed the sharp peaks of his knuckles down until he spots flared and danced behind his eyelids. 

He dropped his hands as he fell down against the smooth top of the wall, perching on the cool stone with his hands braced in his lap and his feet planted firmly in the browning grass. 

Well, this was significantly worse.

His chest clenched tight. The back of his throat burned. There wasn’t anyone around and it was  _ still _ too much. He was an ocean at high tide, overfull of wild, cresting waves. 

All he wanted was his friends.

All he wanted was to see Keith again.

All he  _ needed _ was for everything to be okay.

This, admittedly, wasn’t the way to get there. But he was hurt, and he was tired of trying when it was clear Pidge wasn’t having any of it.

He did one stupid thing and had ruined so much.

Lance sat there all of five more minutes, beating himself up and feeling sorry for himself, before someone came up the road after him. He expected that, really, assumed Hunk would break from the group to come calm him down. Hunk was like that, too pure and good for any of them. His love ran as deeply as Lance’s, just as strong. All this fighting was getting to him too.

But it wasn’t Hunk.

Lance didn’t have to look to confirm it--he could feel it, the emotions announcing Pidge before he joined him on the low-rise wall.

Pidge dropped his bag to the ground, right under his feet. They didn’t quite touch the grass, and hung a little above, casting kicking shadows.

He sat an arms-length away, his arms tightly folded over his chest, and he scowled at the tree across the road like it’d called him a rude name. “Go,” he said. “Two minutes.”

_ Two goddamn minutes. _

It  _ was _ what Lance asked for.

He took them gratefully, and started filling those handful of seconds with as many words, explanations and apologies he could cram inside them.

“Pidge, look,” he began, though neither of them looked at one another. They stared at the same, straight-trunked yew stirring in the breeze. Close enough. “I screwed up. I’ve been screwing up for a while. . .and I got caught up with all of this--this Empathy thing, and seeing Keith--that I just. . .I didn’t notice that it was messing  _ us _ up in the process. And Hunk. . .God love him, Hunk told me why you were getting distant in the first place. So, before I run out of time, that’s the one thing I want to clear up: You’re not losing me, dude. I’m right here. See?”

Lance slapped the stone-measured distance between them. And Pidge glanced over at the noise, looking first at Lance’s hand, then up to Lance’s worried eyes, and back again. His mouth went tight.

“When your mom called me, I thought you were dead.”

Hunk had said as much, in the broken way he refused to say those exact words out loud. His family, too. Maybe all of Indigo Pull that knew he’d ran off during the storm thought the same thing:  _ Boy, missing, another victim of the Adam Wynn killer _ ? Another body to find.

Thinking it and really,  _ really _ allowing himself to dwell on it made Lance sick.

He’d just been with Keith though. Just Keith. Just suddenly absent Keith.

Talking wasn’t helping Lance feel better after all.

“But I’m not dead,” he told Pidge, the yew tree, Indigo Pull itself. And he wasn’t. He could’ve died several times, but he didn’t. Keith had been there to make sure he came back home alive. “I’m right here.”

“Yeah, but for how long?”

The accusation jolted through him. 

“I don’t know what you mean, Pidge, I’m--”

Pidge cut across him, “You’re an idiot! That’s what you are!” He was on his feet suddenly, right in front of him, his whole body shaking under the October morning light. “You do this  _ all the time _ ! When is it going to catch up with you? When’s it going to be the one time you  _ don’t come back _ ?”

Lance stared up at him.

And in the break, Pidge reached down and snatched up Lance’s hands. His broken nails were evidence against anything he could say--there were moments he  _ hadn’t _ been fine. Sketchy moments where he’d literally hung between what Pidge and Hunk feared and what actually happened. 

Of course Pidge noticed. Pidge always noticed things like that. 

“What happened,” he snapped, showing Lance his own hand. “Why is it  _ always your hands _ ?”

Lance jerked his hand away. “I--”

“No! Tell me the truth, not whatever half-lie you told Hunk to make him feel better!”

Lance flinched. He grit his teeth and stared down the road--the empty road. It was just him and Pidge and the rising morning, the wind carding through the trees and Spanish moss. Hunk and Allura must have went on to school without them. Or they waited down at the end of the road for them to catch up. Either way, they were far apart, and Lance gave in and told Pidge everything.

Everything about that night. How Keith showed up at dusk and how they argued. Lance confessed every bitter ounce of his fear at losing him, said-without-saying just how much Keith meant to him, and why, in the moment Keith darted off into the trees, Lance’s only thought was  _ to follow _ . He told Pidge what he remembered, the running, the storm finally coming down. How he didn’t think of the consequences of doing this practically blind until the world ended and pitched him down into a gully.

Lance told him Keith had been the one who snatched him back. The one who saved him. And the one that took them someplace safe to wait out the worst of the storm. 

He told as much truth as he could. Some things, though. . .some things weren’t his to share. And even though he trusted Pidge and Hunk with everything, Lance couldn’t bring himself to confess Keith’s secret to them. 

It wasn’t Lance’s to share.

So, in a way, he half-lied to Pidge too, by omitting the parts that revolved around that. 

“You’re right, Pidge, I am stupid. I know I am. I’ve had a long week to look at it in every angle, and it all leads to the same thing.” Lance looked down at this hands as he said it, the split, ripped off nails, and sighed. “. . .But I couldn’t just let him leave like that. I. . .I would’ve done the same thing for either of you. And you know it. You can be mad at me all you want, call me stupid or an idiot or not talk to me for another week. . .but you know me. I love you guys. I don’t give up on the people I love.”

Pidge was quiet for a long time. The wind did more talking then, the chattering birds eavesdropping in the trees.

“I can’t stand you sometimes, you know that?” Anger backed the statement, but it was Pidge’s fears coming to light that broke through his words. Lance glanced up, and was greeted by the shine of tears speckled behind his glasses, drawing shimmering lines down his cheeks.

In the forest, Lance had ripped out every bad thing Keith was feeling at the time. He took it inside himself and held on to it, all without thinking. A part of him knew it was fundamentally wrong, that he’d abused and crossed some line. But as he watched Pidge rub his eyes, heard the angry noise clenched behind his teeth, Lance almost wanted to do it again.

No, maybe not that, exactly.

What he wanted to do was  _ heal _ it.

Lance got to his feet, and he grabbed Pidge by the shoulders, coaxing him forward. Pidge stumbled into him willingly, his fists pressed against his eyes, rubbing away his tears like doing it fast enough kept Lance from seeing them.

“I know,” Lance said, right against the crown of Pidge’s head. “Listen, in my experience, if you don’t hate your siblings sometimes, then they’re not really family, you know? And considering I’m practically your brother, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Pidge sniffed. “You’re stupid.”

“We’ve covered that a lot today already. Can we get on another topic?”

“Not until I can drive it in that if you ever do something like that again, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Well  _ that’s  _ not fair! And Rachel already told me that, thank you very much! So what are you two going to do? Fight over who gets the final blow?”

“Obviously.” 

“You two are something else, I’ll tell you what.” He pressed his hand to the back of Pidge’s head, and relished that they finally had their talk. Lance sensed the anger starting to fade, forgiveness fizzling it out. It was the best thing he’d felt in a while, and he clung to it, to what it promised. “. . .you know, Pidge, nothing’s gonna stop me from being your friend. You got that? We’re  _ family _ . Don’t ever forget that.”

Pidge dropped his hands, hooked his fingers in the front of Lance’s shirt. He had his face pressed against Lance’s chest, and his glasses sat askance on the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I know. I guess I was a bit stupid too.”

“What!  _ You!  _ Mr. Genius? No!!”

“Not funny, Lance!” Pidge elbowed him in the ribs and stepped away. Lance rubbed his hand over the sting, scowling. “I think I liked not talking to you better.”

Lance laughed, a sweet sound that infected Pidge right with it, drew both their frowns into small smiles. “Well I’ll be the first to say that I absolutely hated it so, please, can we not do that ever again? I don’t think I'll make it.”

Pidge rolled his eyes. “. . .I guess I should apologize, too. For giving you the cold shoulder. I was. . .well, I don’t even have to say, do I? You probably knew it better than I did.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Superpowers, baby.”

“I hate you.”

“Love you too, Pidgey.” Lance hooked his arm around his shoulder, drew him back in, this hug tight and quick and actually returned. “Talk to me next time though, okay? If you ever feel like I’m ignoring you or choosing someone else over you and Hunk. . .just talk to me. I’m not doing it on purpose. You guys know how I get.”

“You and that broken radar of yours, yeah.” Pidge was quiet a second, then admitted, “It’s not like I’m not  _ happy _ for you. I mean, I don’t  _ get _ it. It’s gross.  _ You two  _ are gross together. All those puppy-dog eyes,  _ yuck _ , but I’m happy you’re happy. If that makes sense.” He stepped back, and Lance recognized the face he made as one of the Pidge Specials--his twisted expression, one part knotted brow and three parts frown, came from him trying to process everything and figure it all out. 

Lance chuckled. “Yeah, it does. Though, ouch, how are we  _ gross _ , for one?”

Pidge shrugged, walking past him to get their bags. Lance took his when Pidge offered it. “Everything like that is gross.”

“Just wait until you find the love of your life, Pidge, and we’ll redo this talk.”

Pidge smirked over at him, right when Lance realized what he’d said. “Are you saying  _ Keith’s _ the love of your life?”

Lance’s face burned right through pink to red. “Ha! Nope, no, I’m not, that came out all wrong, and you’ll hold it against me for the rest of my life now, won’t you?”

“It’s like you can read my mind,” Pidge joked.

“Nah, that’s Rachel’s gimmick.” 

“You know what I meant.”

And he did, and, really, he smiled all the same. Even if Pidge called him gross or whatever,  _ this _ was what he missed, just them talking and walking together. The ease of their friendship coming back. Pidge felt it too. They both breathed a little easier after all the bad things weighing them down and pushing them apart finally fell off their backs.

Pidge checked the time on his phone, Lance leaning over his shoulder to see it too. They’d missed half of first period already.

Lance expected Pidge to be upset, but he surprised him by asking, “Wanna just ditch the rest of the day?”

“What?  _ You _ want to skip school?”

Pidge grinned. “Why not? One day won’t hurt.”

“For  _ you _ . I’ve missed a lot already.”

“Never for a. . .what do you like to call them? ‘Mental health day’? You’ve not just skipped to skip. And I think we’re both overdue for some time to just. . .not  _ deal _ with anything.”

It  _ had _ been a long few months.

Pidge had him there.

“What about Hunk? Seems rude to leave him at school by himself,” Lance pointed out.

“Good point. Do you think he’d bail if we told him what we were doing?”

Lance thought about it. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Pidge rewarded him with a wide-toothed grin, his thumbs already tapping out a message. “Exactly what I thought.”

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The week following was much better to them all.

Lance’s mother finally gave him permission to have his friends over, and to let him go to their houses under the very explicit rule that he carried his phone with him at all times. Pidge and Hunk were over almost every day, or the three of them would cram themselves up in Hunk’s tiny attic bedroom. There was still the worry of going back to the Holt estate, but as October started to draw to a close, Pidge finally started to relent.

“It’s not like I’ve caught anymore EVPs since that night anyway,” he said one day, while the three were huddled outside on the McClain’s front porch. They were playing Chinese Checkers with all the marbles mixed up, so none of them really lost or won. Kind of hard to when no one remembered which pieces were theirs to start with.

Hunk had glanced up, surprised, when Pidge let that slip. “You've kept that up?” 

“Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I? Also, to add to that, no more wailing cats either.”

Lance hummed softly, and didn’t say much except, “Maybe it was a one-off.”

“I think it might have more to do with exhaustion,” Pidge mused, and he’d swiped the piece Lance had used prior, skipping the same, little red marble across the board. “I’ve researched spirits and all that a bit, just to see, and a lot of sources bring up the same things. Ghosts, spirits, whatever, it’s all energy, right? And it takes a huge amount of it for it to disturb our side of things. Voices, temperature drops, opening and closing doors.”

“So, it’s, what? Taking a nap,” Lance asked, scowling down at the board. His knee bounced as he tried to juggle two thoughts at once, mind torn between what he’d seen at the Holt’s and what he suddenly realized what had happened to the cat caught on the recording.

“In a way. Think more like it just  _ can’t _ , so it has to wait to build up more and more energy as time goes by before it can affect anything around it again.” Pidge caught Lance’s eye, then Hunk’s, making sure they’d been paying attention before he admitted, “I was going to set up everything one last time Halloween night. If I don’t catch anything, then I think you’re in the clear, Lance.”

“ _ Finally _ .” Lance sent a pink marble to live with the yellows and reds crowded in the wrong colored triangle as Hunk settled a hand on his knee. “I’ll go ahead and make a reservation for November first, then. Pen me in, will you, Pidge?”

A few days after Pidge and Lance had their talk, Keith showed up one night, crawling in through Lance’s cracked bedroom window, fuming mad and excited all at once. Excited to see Lance, but mad at having stayed away so long. The press of it woke Lance up from a dead sleep, vaguely infecting him in similar ways, so he matched Keith's energy a little more with each step he made towards the bed.

Lance sat up, and Keith flopped down on the bed beside him, radiating these feelings openly. Or Lance felt them easily, either way. When he pressed his hand to the top of Keith’s hair, he relaxed immediately, comforted that he was in this room with Lance beside him. It made Lance’s heart ache.

“Hey, you,” Lance told him in greeting.

Keith’s muffled, “Hey,” barely made it from the sheets.

Lance waited, but Keith stayed like he was, moving only to curl his arms over the top of his head. Hiding. The anger in him started to fade away, replaced with another, more hopeful feeling Lance understood at once.

“Long time no see.” It was a prompt, an invitation for Keith to speak up. A question laying underneath, in plain sight, of what Lance had been wondering for the last few days.

At that, Keith finally peeked up at him. His arms slid back, and he pushed himself up in a similar position to Lance’s, scooting back until his spine hit the headboard. “. . .I know. I’m sorry about that. I. . .I had some stuff to deal with,” he explained without actually explaining anything.

“You can tell me,” Lance said. “What made you  _ that _ mad in the first place?”

Lance watched Keith’s jaw clench. His fingers curled up over the tops of his knees. “. . .you felt that?”

“Kind of hard not to. You were practically heating the air with it.” He admitted, “It woke me up.”

Keith pressed one of his hands over his eyes. “That’s. . .going to be hard to get used to.”

“Likewise.” A tease. Enough of one to bubble a laugh past Keith’s lips. Lance unconsciously smiled. “There we go. That’s  _ way _ better. You wanna talk about it?”

He looked as indecisive as he felt, ironically both showing off as a twist--of his brow, and deeper in, a tangle of emotion that Lance couldn’t make heads or tails of. Anger and anxiety, a touch of happiness, a tender curl of sadness woven throughout. The only thing Lance couldn’t trace was the hunger that’d always been there before, hidden in the mess of everything else.

“. . .I don’t know,” Keith finally answered, and again, his voice was pitched softly, hardly heard. “It’s nothing. . .it’s--”

“It’s not  _ nothing _ , but I get it if you don’t want to say anything. It’s okay.”

Guilt rubbed up the back of Lance’s throat, all Keith’s. There were still some unspoken things hanging between them, little things, small as nightmares feel when it’s morning and they’re barely remembered. A lingering doubt or uncertainty. A dull taste of fear.

It wasn’t why he came over in the first place. Keith’s longing was just as strong as his anger, a thrill to feel sink into his own heart. Simply put, they'd missed each other. And sitting there, while waiting on Keith to think of what to say, Lance missed him like he wasn’t sitting right beside him at all.

It drew Lance up on his knees, pulled his hands over to catch Keith’s face. And Keith--Keith leaned into his palms, leaned towards  _ him _ , cranning forward like this was the real thing he’d been starving for all those months. It was an easy thing to slide into Keith’s lap, easier to tilt Keith’s face up towards him, the faint moonlight streaming in through the window kissing him before Lance had the chance.

Keith’s mouth parted for his the same moment Lance moved his hands elsewhere, skimming up into his hair while Keith lowered his own hands to grab Lance’s hips.  _ This _ was where the excitement had come from, the possibilities of being close again. Lance felt it too, this time in the rush of his heart and in his shaking hands.

As Lance combed his fingers through Keith’s hair, he found another stray leaf, felt the coarseness of it under his touch. Keith  _ smelled  _ like the forest right after the storm had pulled all the mulchy, damp scents out from hiding. Like he'd spent all those nights sleeping on the hard dirt floor of the shack. Like Keith hadn't taken a shower in days.

Lance leaned away.

Keith automatically moved to follow. His hands--they were insistent tonight, warm as the dying embers of a neglected campfire.  _ Hot _ . They coaxed Lance forward again, and Lance went willingly, caught easily in the trap of Keith’s open affection. He'd waited for this for days. Dreamt of Keith's dark eyes and his wild smile. Of his strong arms and long-fingered hands and the way they made him feel when they dared to push up under his shirt.

He had missed him too, told him this in the way only his hands and mouth could. By touching and kissing him back, by murmuring half-spoken things against his mouth, his train of thought broken every time Keith inched his hands a little further up. His skin burned under the attention.

It was the cool, night air against his stomach that brought Lance back. He grabbed Keith's hands and moved them away, squeezing his fingers between Keith's, pinning them down against his legs. Keith hummed an unspoken question at him, and Lance nearly melted under the emotions he picked up on.

“ _ Wait _ \--hold on--” Lance leaned back again, drawing Keith's focus, forcing him to pay attention. “Where've you been the last few days?”

Keith blinked at him slowly. “What?”

“Have you been staying in that rundown shack?” he asked, brow knit. Keith frowned suddenly, looking away from him. “ _ Keith _ .”

“I--” Keith seemed to rethink what he was about to say. He paused, chewing on his words, shoulders suddenly tense. “. . .yeah.”

Lance drew in breath, let it out in a rush. “Alright, get up, follow me.”

Keith didn't move, but at least he turned to watch Lance clamber around him and off the bed. “Lance--”

He flipped a hand at him, already cutting over to his closet in a few, long strides. Lance jerked open the door. “If you're about to tell me ‘it's fine’ or ‘not to worry about it’ or lie, don't. I've suspected it for a while now, anyway.”

He heard a noise from the bed, the soft betrayals of someone moving off the sheets, a pair of feet barely touching the floor. When Lance leaned back out, carrying an armful of clothes, Keith stood awkwardly by the end of his bed, glaring down at his muddy boots. Now that he was standing and the distraction of getting to see him again waned, Lance saw Keith was wearing a very familiar turtleneck and joggers.

Keith didn’t acknowledge Lance when he came back. He was too busy feeling ashamed and nervous for that. Lance lightly touched his arm.

“. . .what I told you the other night, about saying or not saying things? That still stands.” Lance held out the clothes between them. Keith didn't look at them. “But. . .if you need a place to stay Keith, you can stay with me.”

The words hit him deep, strongly enough Lance almost recoiled from them himself. Shame burned in his chest. And something else, something  _ worse _ , a defiance bordering on disbelief.

And disappointment, cool and clear, river water deep.

“I didn't come here for your pity, Lance.” Keith said it to hurt, and it did, but no amount of bite could mask the undertow of why he said it. Of why he stood there in dirty clothes that hadn't seen a wash in as long as he had.

Lance pushed the clothes against Keith's chest and held them there when Keith kept his arms slack at his sides. “And you aren't getting it.”

“ _ Or _ your charity. I've had enough of that from Shiro and the Holt's.”

“Great, because you aren't getting that either.” Lance pulled back his hand. Keith jerked his up automatically to catch the clothes before they hit the floor. “Trust me, I can’t afford charity. This is me doing something for someone I care about.”

Keith glanced up at that, his violet eyes boring right into Lance's, his fingers digging down deep into one of Marco's old shirts. If looks could touch, this one rubbed all the way down Lance's back, nails biting.

Leaning across the small distance between them, Lance grabbed Keith's face. Here was when he broke, his stubbornness wilting under Lance's hands. Keith was a sunflower seeking the pull and rise of light, and Lance was almost like the sun. 

“ _ Mi casa es tu casa _ ,” he said, and again, to really make his point, “My home is yours, too. The window is always open. You have my permission. Whatever it is that you need to hear, Keith. . .if you need a place to sleep, we'll work something out. If you need clothes, have mine. My brothers pass me down a lot of theirs anyway, stuff I won't wear but can't bring myself to throw out. If you need a shower--which--” Lance tugged a lock of Keith's hair. “--you  _ do _ \--you might have to fight my siblings for a turn, but we do have two bathrooms in the house.”

Keith's jaw clenched. 

Back when Lance first spied Keith in the graveyard, all those months ago, he thought this meant something entirely different. On the outside, it had the look of barely contained rage. But on the inside, as only Lance could know, it derived from a place that'd torn inside him the day his father died.

Nothing could keep that from Lance now, the deep understanding that Keith wasn't all anger and impulse: He was grief and loss and longing, all loosely stitched together.

Lance curled his fingers into Keith dark hair. He said nothing else, but the way he brought their mouths together said more than he could the rest of the night. The sweetness of it, the caring he felt, Lance imagined he pressed it to Keith from his hands, his lips, pouring it into him like it might fill all the broken pieces. Like it could somehow help heal him.

Distantly, Keith sucked in a small breath.

And Lance drew back, fingertips slipping down his cheekbones to the sharp cut of his jaw, the generous swoon of his neck, drawing this broken boy whole again.

It worked. Or it started to work. Little by little, one stitch at a time. Lance felt it. He  _ saw _ it, the tension rolling off Keith's shoulders, releasing from the grip of his hands.

“C'mon,” Lance said, and he stepped ahead without looking back, knowing Keith would follow, a second shadow nipping at the backs of his heels.

And follow he did, down the hall and into the cramped bathroom, the overhead light a blaze of artificial white that made Keith squint. To spare him, Lance cut the switch. The room fell into darkness. 

“Better?”

Keith breathed out a sigh. “A little, I guess. And. Thanks. I'm sorry I snapped at you. I. . .”

Lance waved him off again, turning to leave, trying his best to ignore the rush of Keith's anxiousness. “It's fine. I know you didn't mean it.”

“But--”

Even in the dark Lance could find Keith's mouth and shut him up the best way he knew how.

“Hurry up. We don't have all night,” Lance prompted, urging him back with his hands. 

His smile caught as rapid as a wildfire when Keith joked back, “I mean,  _ I _ do.” 

“Ha ha.” Lance swatted his shoulder. “Towels are under the sink, by the way.”

Nothing could hide the soft touch of Keith's mirth, the pleasure at saying something that made Lance smile like that. Not the closed bathroom door, not the distance down the hall, and not the several minutes that passed while Lance lay on his bed, waiting on Keith to come back. 

It was warmth, it was sunlight gold, and tingled all the way down to his toes.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


This wasn't what Keith expected when he came over, but he couldn't exactly complain about a warm shower after all. And, though he protested it to start, a new change of clothes turned out to be exactly what he needed. Well, almost. Keith was aware of the other things he needed ( _ wanted _ ), but they waited for him down the hall, and were there in Lance's bright smile when he stepped back into his blue, starry room a little while later.

Lance rocked forward, his hands up, making grabbing gestures at him. Keith wondered if Lance ever thought about how he looked on the outside, how inviting and silly each little thing he did somehow became. The energy he gave off, that aura of acceptance and caring--how much if it was intentional and how much of it was innately  _ Lance _ ? How much of it was his gift spilling out, drawing people in?

It was the same thing that'd pulled Keith to him in the first place. There were hazy moments in his life--his mother leaving, his dad's funeral, Shiro's raised voice muffled by walls and doors and Adam's overlaying arguments--but falling for Lance's natural radiance wasn't one of them.

Keith was tired of lying. Of hiding away all the small, fractured pieces that made him up. And suddenly, with Lance, he didn’t need to.

He slipped his fingers between Lance's as he joined him back on the bed. 

The lights were off. The carefully arranged plastic stars stuck to the ceiling gave off their faint, nuclear green glow. For Lance, they were tiny spots of dim light. For Keith, they washed the room in the same color, made an ocean of the blue walls and carpet, muddied the bronze of Lance's skin; it made his eyes brighter, the same teal and aqua of crashing waves.

“Hey, you,” Keith whispered in the darkness.

Lance's smile was a sunrise. “Hey. You smell better.”

He rolled his eyes. “Really.”

“Yeah,” Lance answered, taking it as a serious question. “Like--oh, like my body wash, actually.” His laughter turned to music in the dark.

Something hitched inside Keith’s chest. 

Lance dropped one of his hands at exactly the same moment, and pressed it right over the place that hurt. Instinct. Magic. Just Lance being Lance.

“What's all that for,” he asked him, his tone playful. Lance already knew. Keith didn't have to say anything at all.

How could you say ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ at the same time?

He didn’t even know where to start, how to pick the right words to explain how he felt. Lance’s intuition understood it better than he could articulate anyway, and the slow rise of Lance’s smile confessed it, the quick upward flick of his eyes. The slow slip of his hand, the gentle way he cradled the side of Keith’s face. All of it.  _ These _ were the things he missed and wanted--the small ways Lance could undo him and put him back together with a touch or a smile or a look.

“You know,” Keith answered, with a gentle shrug of his shoulders.

“I have a suspicion.” More like an understanding. An acceptance. Things Keith didn’t realize he’d needed ( _ craved _ ) until he finally had them.

“Good or bad?”

Lance hummed to let him know he was thinking on it. As he did, he coaxed Keith under the blanket for the two of them to share. “Both.”

“Both?”

“Not to sound like a fortune cookie, but yeah. Good because it’s a good feeling but bad because it’s a bad feeling too. Or you feel bad feeling it.” Lance frowned to himself. “Okay, so I can’t explain it. But I can  _ feel _ it. It’s kind of hard to get a grasp on it with you. Pidge and Hunk are way easier.”

“. . .what do you mean?”

“Pidge says it’s a ‘familiarity’ thing. With people I’ve known longer, I can read them better. And I know you, but not as well or as long as, like, Hunk. So sometimes. . .and especially at the start of all this, you come off as a muddled mess I can’t sort through.” Here, Lance pressed his fingertips over Keith’s heart. “I used to think of it like a knot.”

For some reason, that amused him. “A knot?”

A corner of Lance’s mouth twitched up. “Yeah. I could  _ see _ all the individual strings, but it was too much of a mess to work out. Pidge is kind of opposite. He’s very in control over what he feels. Think. . .think boxes with labels. Hunk, too, but he has bigger boxes that are open most of the time.”

“. . .what’s mine feel like now,” he asked.

“A slightly less messy knot,” Lance joked. “I’m getting better at it. I can pick out some things, your strong emotions mostly. I knew you were pissed when you got here, but also excited too. Like that.”

Keith was glad Lance only sensed so much.

Lance didn’t know he’d come back the night after the storm, when the sun finally set and he could leave the protective canopy of the forest. He practically ran to the farmhouse, anxious to talk to him and check on him. Lance didn’t know that the moment he stepped too close, Rachel sensed him first and threw pictures into his head, quick and measured, one right after the other, so one memory became another became another and finally sent him reeling back.

The images. . .they were  _ Lance’s _ , taken and repurposed, Keith forced to watch each one play out. They were Lance’s shaking hands, slick with blood, nails pulled off, soil burning his fingertips smooth. It was his pain or his memory of pain--the aching cold of the rain crashing down on him. The burn of his lungs, his throat, when he screamed Keith’s name in the dark. 

Those memories haunted him the rest of the night, unshakable nightmares.

The next night, the same thing, but this time Keith forced himself to stand at the edge of the forest line, hands breaking and reforming, breaking and reforming, as Lance’s memory of falling played in his head.

The following night, he knew what to expect and accepted it and it didn’t stop him from storming up to the house, his arms shaking at his sides. But Lance wasn’t there that evening, and Rachel had stepped out on the porch instead, boots pounding down the stairs.

“You’re a stubborn piece of work, you know that,” she’d said.

And Keith told her, “Funny, I was going to say the same about you.”

Which was a mistake because she clearly had the advantage. And she used it too, thrust a memory of Lance looking at his own wrist, studying the wide bloom of a deep, dark bruise. The place he’d bitten. Keith knew it at once. He’d been walking steadily until then, determined, and that one thing by itself sent him staggering back.

“Don’t start,” she warned, and he didn’t. Rachel glared at him, and Keith saw that her eyes were the same shade of blue Lance’s were. Her skin just a shade lighter. “I want it to sink in that, because of  _ you _ , he nearly died.”

Keith turned and went back into the forest, twigs popping under his heavy boots like brittle, snapping bones.

The next two nights he stayed away, prowled the edge of the trees like a lost dog seeking the comfort of home.

And now tonight, freedom found at last.

Lance looked up at him, eyes searching his face. He must feel the way Keith’s heart kicked up, his anger building again. The bruises, the scream tearing out of his throat. The worry, the fear deep enough to drown in. Pain searing through his hands. Keith closed his eyes and saw them all again; and opened, they lingered, Lance’s memories his memories now. Warnings, read loud and clear.

As if Keith hadn’t been thinking over what Rachel told him that first night, about how his recklessness could’ve caused worse effects than it had. A bruise was nothing in comparison, a small hurt, to being dead. Or  _ this _ .

In the gentle light, Keith touched his fingers to Lance’s wrist. He wasn’t surprised when Lance flinched his arm away.

Rachel’s methods were severe, sure. Over-the-top, bordering on cruel, a torture. But it came with the sharpened edge of knowing  _ why  _ she did it. 

Keith heard and saw the way Lance’s family swallowed him up the second he made it home. They were a force of love so strong Keith immediately became sectioned away from it, an outcast witnessing a private thing. And he’d nearly taken that very thing from them in the span of a few, rain-drenched hours.

“Okay, so what’s all this suddenly?” Lance questioned. Keith realized Lance held his face between his hands again, his palms warming his cheeks. 

“It’s nothing,” Keith lied.

Everyone did stupid things for the people they loved. That’s what it boiled down to. It showed in two very different ways now--in Keith’s stubbornness to come back to Lance at all costs, and Rachel’s determination to keep him away. Two very opposite ways to cope with fear.

“Well, if you say so.” Lance didn’t believe it for a second. Not only did Keith not  _ sound _ honest, his emotions effortlessly gave him away. “Cause you don’t  _ feel _ so.”

He knew that. And he knew this was opposite of what he wanted. This shouldn’t be about that, anyway, just this right here: A moment stolen, finally, for the two of them to keep.

Keith pulled Lance into him, leaving words to wait. His face found the soft pillow of his hair, buried there, and he heard Lance sigh in defeat.

“You sure know how to change the subject, don’t you?” he said, sounding a little better.

“Not really. This was my last ditch effort.”

“Yeah, yeah.” A pause, then, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Keith hadn’t been ‘okay’ in years.

But tonight, he was better than he had been in a long time. He’d showered and changed into clean clothes, and for the first time since he could remember, he wasn’t hungry. Lance was pressed against him, their legs a familiar tangle of closeness they’d shared several times before. He was warmed through not only by this, but by the way Lance curled his arms around him, almost unconsciously.

Keith wanted this. And he had it now, caught in his hands, pressed right up against him.

The words wouldn’t come. They halted at the back of his throat, where he struggled between spitting them out and swallowing them whole. A part of him still thought this was a bad idea, and agreed with Rachel’s punishment. It’s what he deserved--not this. Not Lance’s gentle caring and each and every time Lance pressed his warm hands against him.

And the other part of him. . .that was the selfish part coming through again. The side of him that grasped on and refused to let go because this, in its small way, made him feel complete.

“Keith?”

He didn’t want to keep losing people.

Lance started to push away, preparing to lean up and gain his attention again. Keith stopped him before he could, tucked his arms around him, squeezed him tight, and pressed his mouth to the top of Lance’s head. 

“You don’t mind if I stay,” he asked, which wasn’t anything he really wanted to say. A filler topic. A wild goose chase purposely started.

Lance hummed softly in thought, and he laid his palm flat against Keith’s chest again, over his heart, catching his pulse. “Whatever you need,” he said again. One of these days, Keith thought he might deserve it. “I have school in the morning, but I can try to cover up the windows.”

Keith felt him turn in his arms, and opened his eyes, glancing over at the same window he always used to sneak in. The curtains were thin, more by time than from design, and they’d spill in the morning light better than they kept it out. They did a terrible job with the moon shining in, and it was a crescent sliver in the sky no bigger than a half-forgotten dream.

Lance moved away, taking everything he gave with him, including most of the blanket. He rummaged around in his room, trying to do it blindly, Keith sitting there, watching him and waiting on him until he finally got up too. It was Keith who turned on the overhead lights. Lance froze and glanced back at him, crouched down in front of the dresser stored in his closet.

“Doesn’t that hurt your eyes,” he asked. He jerked open the bottom drawer and riffled through it, tossing aside old blankets and sheets that weren’t exactly what he was looking for. 

“No.” 

Yes, actually. But not enough to warrant Lance banging his hands on everything he misremembered where it sat in the room. It wasn’t like the 40 watt bulbs were direct sunlight or even sunlight at all; it was more annoying than painful.

Lance felt the truth of it, or Keith assumed he did. He didn’t ask anymore questions, did what he needed, and was up on his feet a minute later, holding a couple of thicker sheets in his hands.

“This will go faster with two of us anyway.” Lance grabbed a few push pins from a jar on his desk--how he found them so quickly amongst the clutter almost made Keith laugh in surprise. “Come help me.”

It was shoddy work, quickly done, the blankets off-kilter and hastily pinned in place. They layered over the glass, which was the important part, and after double- and triple-checking, Lance stood back, his hands nestled firmly at his hips, and beamed at their handiwork like it was something really to be proud of.

“Think that’ll keep out the sun?” Lance glanced over at him when he asked it.

“I think so. I should be alright.” He didn’t even know if he was going to stay into the day. His instinct told him  _ no _ . The shack in the forest was better, further off from anyone that might find out--but Keith had to allow himself to remember he wasn’t exactly hiding anything anymore. Lance  _ knew _ . Lance knew everything and he still stood right beside him, smiling at his quick thinking, at how he’d found one small thing to do to make Keith’s stay a little easier.

Keith knew it right then that he was caught. A moth snagged in a sticky web. Helpless.

He saw Lance’s smile and returned it.

Lance came forward and took his hands. “Okay, great. Now lights off so I can get some sleep because I got--” He glanced at his clock. Groaned, his whole body sinking nearly to the floor before he popped back up, one of his hands finding his eyes. “Well, like three hours of sleep now but, you know, better than nothing.”

Keith thought it was only polite not to laugh, however funny Lance’s full-body reaction was. He’d done that before, what Keith remembered as much longer ago than it was, in the parlor of the Holt’s when he tried to turn on his phone. That same playful energy Keith kept coming back for.

Sometime later, when Keith nearly dozed off himself, Lance asked, the question caught first in the fabric of his borrowed shirt, “. . .will you be here tomorrow?”

The wanting inside of him told before he could answer Lance out loud.

Keith heard the smile in his voice, “Okay, good. Because tomorrow is pumpkin carving day, and I want you to join us.”

“Pumpkin carving day?”

“Yeah.” And Lance explained what he meant: A family tradition of fetching pumpkins from the fall harvest and spending the evening gutting them and carving them up. “Halloween’s only a week away,” he said. “Plus, who doesn’t love making jack-o-lanterns? Hunk and Pidge are coming, too. It’ll be fun.”

Keith hadn’t carved a pumpkin since he was. . .since he was probably eight. He remembered Shiro crouched outside on the back steps of his dad’s house-- _ his _ old house, the one he grew up in--carefully cutting circles into the heads of two pumpkins. Keith couldn’t remember what they’d done for the faces, if they free-handed monsters or wicked teeth, but he distinctly recalled Shiro helping him scoop out the stringy insides, one slimy fistful at a time.

And laughter. Lots of laughter. Shiro’s bright smile. The sticky-slick feeling of pumpkin guts squeezing past the gaps of his fingers. And his Pops, sitting on an old folding chair, a cigarette pinched between his teeth, busy whittling down a thick square of cherrywood. Maybe he’d been singing, the lyrics turned to new smoke in the air. Or maybe Keith was thinking of the old radio sitting on the table in the kitchen, music bleating from its speakers in broken static.

It was a shock both in what he remembered and what he couldn’t recall. 

Absently, Keith clutched his fingers in the back of Lance’s shirt.

“. . .are you okay,” Lance asked, sensing something amiss.

“Yeah. . .yeah, I’m okay.” Maybe not right now, but sometime soon. Healing was the slowest process to suffer through. “. . .and, yeah. I’d like that. I’ll carve pumpkins with you.”

Lance mentioned briefly that he sometimes infected people with his own emotions. Not on purpose--he simply felt things too strongly and it pulsed out of him. 

It happened now, a touch of spreading, tingling warmth that had Keith smiling without reason. He felt  _ excited _ for tomorrow night; he could barely wait. It was an insight into how Lance absorbed and understood the emotions broadcasting off of everyone else--this was Keith’s small taste of what it must be like to be understood so deeply. It was his look into Lance’s heart, how he felt when Keith promised he’d stay.

The best part was Lance didn’t even realize it. He laughed once, in absolute delight, and pressed his face right to Keith’s chest, told him, “Great!” and that was it. He fell asleep with the happiness pillowing his head, unknowingly listening to it race and rage in Keith’s own heart, held and taken and kept.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The day dawned clear and bright, sharp October blue. It fell, by the hour, behind an advancing silver cloud shelf pushed in from the North. The chilled wind scented the air like peppermint, a cold promising a late night chance at flurries and a new, Saturday morning bright with the seasons’ first snowfall. Indigo Pull prepared by shaking out stored sweaters and finding the correct matches to boots, and the entire town went in collectively and bought every loaf of bread the supermarket still had on the shelves. All the milk, too. Every carton of eggs.

Excitement came right along with it. A thrill of possibility. How much of the forecasted four inches would fall? Would Indigo Pull open its eyes to a hint of winter, or the same, frost-crusted fields of browning grass? The weathermen could only guess; Veronica knew, and her small smile over breakfast told Lance everything he needed to know.

Before, Lance always thought snowfall was one of the only remnants of magic left in the world. His childhood was filled with late nights of silence, broken only by the soft  _ crunch _ of his boots sinking into the snow, the backlit softness of the moon’s shine blooming around him, from sky to ground to sky again. He never told it to anyone, but after the best snowstorms, Lance would creep out of the house, bundled up and quiet, and pick his way out into the cow pastures. If the sky was clear, ink-dark and the stars never brighter, Lance would stand alone out in the middle of it, in the muted softness it brought, and felt as close to space as he ever would.

It was easy to pretend the pasture was actually the moon's dusty, white surface. The drifts of snow showcased his lone set of footsteps like they were the first to ever touch the ground. Lance was an explorer, rediscovering Indigo Pull as the second moon it'd become.

The anticipation slowed the day almost unbearably. The walk home from school took hours. And waiting on Hunk and Pidge to pack their overnight bags nearly had Lance yanking out his hair.

It wasn't just the snow. Keith promised him he'd be there when he got home. Morning solidified it--when Lance jolted awake when his alarm trilled off, Keith was still pressed against him, deeply asleep, a warmth too tempting to leave.

It was actually embarrassing how long Lance laid there, watching the gentle rhythm of his breathing. Keith looked different when he was sleeping, the first and only time he was entirely calm.

He may or may not have picture evidence on his phone, too, but that's neither here nor there.

By the time the trio reached the McClain’s driveway, they were greeted by the sight of various tables and chairs scattered around the yard. Luis was just leaving the house, carefully holding an assortment if kitchen knives out of reach of his children zipping around his feet. Marco followed, arms laden with clear, plastic bowls of all sizes. Rachel dragged out two garbage cans by the ears.

Sylvio noticed them first, and he was on them like a hunting dog on a scent, bounding over the pockmarked dips and rolls of the lawn, running as quick as his little feet could take him. Nadia darted right behind.

Their chorus of, “ _ Tío, Tío _ !” brought an effortless smile to his lips. He knew exactly when to crouch to scoop Nadia up in his arms when she jumped at him, and the exact moment to lower his hand for Sylvio to tug on.

“Come on! We have to go to the fields,” his nephew said, trying to pull Lance there by his wrist.

“We've been waiting  _ forever _ ,” Nadia agreed, already as dramatic as Lance was at that age. She even sighed deeply for added effect, and Lance barely bit back his bark of laughter in time.

“Hey, now, it's not good to lie,” he chided, as he set his niece down. She turned wide eyes up at him, playing at an innocence that had half his family fooled. “Nope. Keep that up, and we'll take extra long putting our stuff up, won't we guys?”

Pidge nudged his glasses further up his nose. “You know, I  _ could _ do with a few minutes warming up. I'm freezing from the walk here.”

Hunk nodded his agreement. “Totally. Might whip up some hot chocolate before we start, get us all nice and toasty before we do anything fun.”

The kids groaned. Their tiny hands urged the teens forward, yanking or grabbing at their bags to help rush the process. And all the while, Lance laughed and laughed until he finally gave in. 

“Alright! You two win this time!” He brushed them aside. “Go get auntie V, and we'll meet you back here in a few, okay?”

He watched them run inside ahead of him, and he smiled over his shoulder at his friends, saying, “ _ Kids _ ,” like he wanted to complain but his voice only knew how to betray his love for them. They knew. Hunk chuckled quietly, and Pidge had a smile on that didn't seem like it'd dim any time soon. This family was as much theirs as it was Lance's.

They dropped off their bags in Lance's room. In a rush of disappointment, Lance realized his bed was empty--perfectly made and vacant. He tried not to let it show on his face. 

It did anyway.

Hunk noticed first. He cocked a brow and squinted at him, leaning in close, studying the downward slope of Lance's frown. “What's up?”

Lance shrugged. He kicked his bag under his desk. “Nothing,” he said, exactly when Pidge noticed the blankets pinned over the windows.

“What's  _ that _ all about?”

Lance shrugged again.

Behind him, the door opened, and all three of them prepared to chastise the kids again for their impatience. But it wasn't them at the door. It was someone taller, dressed in a soft red flannel and a snug pair of black jeans, with a head of unruly, sleep-tousled hair.

Keith glanced at each and every one of them, his eyes settling on Lance last. “Hey,” he murmured, drowsy and rough.

Lance’s stomach flipped over. 

“Hey, I wondered--” He didn't lie when he talked to Hunk and Pidge earlier about inviting Keith, he just conveniently left out the part about him sleeping over. Not that it was scandalous in any way--the only thing they did was  _ sleep _ \--but he held back, worried more that Keith  _ wouldn't  _ be there than he would. “--when you'd show up.”

Keith’s confusion touched him though didn't show on his face. “I did a little while ago,” he said, playing along. “My time gets messed up not going to school. I don't even know what day of the week it is.”

Pidge supplied the answer. “It's Friday. The 23rd,” he said, and something lit up in his eyes, in his usually quiet emotions.  _ Surprise _ . “Oh. Hey. Happy Birthday, Keith.”

_ Happy Birthday _ .

But why did it make Keith feel like that?

And why hadn't he said anything before? They'd been together all night, Keith could've mentioned it. Or, maybe he had, in a way that wasn't speaking at all, his emotions turning sad and sour. Like now.

Hunk clapped his hands together. “Dude! Happy Birthday!”

Lance repeated it last, and it was the moment Keith looked away, down at his boots--the leather streaked with mud--his mouth set in a frown. He told them all  _ thank you _ so quietly Lance was sure he imagined it.

The late evening chill warranted changing into heavier clothes. Pidge and Hunk had done the same at their respective houses, and they layered up to fight off the oncoming weather. Pidge wore another of Matt's hoodies and a jacket over that. Hunk had on the puffiest coat Lance had ever seen in his life. To spare them from waiting on him, Lance waved the three of them out his room, promising he'd be downstairs in a second. 

Keith lingered behind, a shadow snagged in the doorframe. Lance knew why. He read it in two separate ways.

In the hush that followed Pidge and Hunk’s footsteps down the hall, Lance ducked in close, voice a hush, “Why didn't you tell me?”

Keith wouldn't look at him. “It's not important.”

“Your  _ birthday _ isn’t important?” 

Lance caught his shirt sleeve as Keith turned to leave. He watched the wide plane of Keith’s shoulders tense, his hands hanging at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling. Something shivered inside him, lost and tangled in the rest.

Keith shrugged, all the answer he’d give.

Thinking he'd upset him, Lance plowed on, keeping his voice low so it wouldn't carry down the hall. “Listen, I'm bad at remembering things. I only know Pidge's birthday because he sets an alarm on my phone to go off every year the day before. And Hunk forced me to use his as my lock code on my phone. And even  _ then _ , I kept locking myself out.” 

Lance flashed Keith his hands. Ball-point pen ink tattooed his dark skin, short-handed notes slipping up under the sleeve of his jacket. A child's doodles were at his wrist, spaceships and aliens and the blue-marker blast of laser guns. 

“I have to write things on my hands because I forget,” he admitted, though the pudding's proof was right there, in black and blue.

Keith reached over and lightly touched the shoddy artwork, fingertips barely grazing over his skin. “I'm not. . .it's not that you didn't know. It's fine. I don't really celebrate it, I guess that’s what I'm trying to say.”

Again, that gentle sadness. A longing for things out of reach. It hit Lance like a sucker punch right beneath his ribs--with Shiro not in town, who else would Keith want to celebrate with? Except--and Lance burned with selfish shame in thinking it--except maybe  _ him _ . 

“Well, tough luck then. Your birthday party is now downstairs, just decided. You can go pick the first pumpkin.” Lance watched Keith fight a smile, and, on impulse, he grabbed his face, fingers splayed across his pale cheeks. “And Keith?”

His plum-dark eyes flicked up to his. “Yeah, Lance?” 

They leaned towards one another, mouths meeting in the middle, hardly brushing, not a kiss but a suggestion of a kiss. It had Keith sighing apart his lips all the same, drew his hands down, catching Lance by his hips.

“Happy birthday,” Lance murmured, each word a new kiss, each letter an invitation to shift in closer,  _ be _ closer. One step, and they were chest-to-chest, and Lance raked his hands back through Keith's hair, kissing him harder with a gasp they both felt drop into their stomachs. 

Keith's hands were like fire again, burning hot, his touch commanding all of Lance's focus. When he stepped forward, Lance stepped back. When Keith made a small noise against his lips, Lance caught it with his tongue. When Keith pushed his hands under Lance’s shirt, dragging them up Lance's stomach, Lance fell back against the doorframe and let him. 

He would've let him do a lot more, too, if the telling alarm of little feet didn't sound from the stairs.

Lance pressed against Keith's chest, urging him back, a delicate swear ghosting over Keith's face when he rocked backwards. He had a dazed look about him, his eyes half-lidded, lips a telling flush pink. Lance figured he looked no better, and at least managed to smooth a few wrinkles out of his shirt before Nadia and Sylvio made it to his room.

“ _ Tío _ ! Come  _ on _ !”

“You're taking  _ forever _ for real this time!”

“I was just heading downstairs!” Lance threw an apologetic look over his shoulder at Keith, trying his best to ignore the very persistent, very obvious feelings rolling off of him in waves. “Weren't we, Keith?”

Even so, the kids lead them outside by their hands, to make absolutely sure there were no more delays.

The sky had turned pure silver by then, the clouds fluffed goose down, bulking and dark-bellied. Each crisp breath of air burned the back of Lance’s throat, and the biting wind concealed the real reason his cheeks were flushed. 

Hunk and Pidge waited on them by the table. The look they exchanged and pinned on Lance told him that they'd been caught. Lance waited for Pidge's anxiety, the gentle prickles up the back of his own neck, but tonight it didn't come. 

“ _ Took _ you two long enough. We’re freezing to death out here.”

“I really should've stopped and made that hot cocoa, man. I regret it now.” Hunk's teasing laughter brightened Lance's mood.

“After,” Lance promised, as he ushered the kids forward, like they need the incentive to bolt towards the pumpkin patch. “These two will bite my hands off if I take even a second longer, won't you?”

Sylvio snapped his teeth.

Lance sighed, shrugging in defeat. “See? Vicious.”

He patted their backs, and smiled down at them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keith watch him and fold his arms across his chest, hands cupping his elbows. 

“Alright, go on, but! It's Keith’s birthday today.” Lance jerked a thumb at him. Keith started, his hands falling, brows shooting up into his hairline. “So he gets first pick. Fair?”

“Fair!” Nadia grabbed Keith's arm first, Sylvio a second after. 

Keith looked like he didn't understand what was about to happen. And he probably didn't. Honestly, those kids were demons.

He cut his violet eyes to Lance, seeking an explanation. “What? No, seriously, it's--”

The kids were tired of waiting: They jerked Keith forward by his sleeves, and Keith staggered behind them, tripping over his own feet as they went down the yard. And, God love him, Keith didn't snatch his arms back once.

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  
  


Carving pumpkins on his birthday--of all the things to happen. That didn't mean it was  _ bad _ , just weird. Silly. And, yeah, okay, maybe a little fun too.

When everyone finally regrouped around the table with their prizes in-hand, Lance picked a spot by him, standing close enough that every turn or twitch bumped their hips together or brought their hands inches from touching. For his part, Lance acted like this was all accidental. 

His small smile told Keith otherwise.

Not that he was complaining.

Hunk stood across the table, Pidge to his right, his chin perched in his hand. His jacket puffed around him like a comical display of dark plumage. The strong look of concentration on his face sent Lance into giggles.

“I have no clue what I want to do. There's a million possibilities and only so much level of skill in these hands,” Hunk sighed. 

Pidge snorted. He had his pumpkin tilted up, free-handing a design on the orange skin in Sharpie. “Said like yours won't be the best one at this table. Stop showing off.”

“It's not showing off until it's done, and I'm still undecided on what to do. I'm thinking ‘haunted house’. Is anyone else doing a haunted house? I want to be set apart.” Hunk leaned over, and he squinted at Pidge's design. “What even  _ is  _ that?”

“A ghost.”

Keith saw the pinch form between Hunk's brows, watched him lean forward to fact check what Pidge said. “Why does it have lizard feet?”

“Leave it, Hunk! It’s artistic expression!”

“Is that what we're call ‘a mess’ now?”

Pidge threw the marker at him. 

Lance passed his own pumpkin off to Luis, practically bouncing. “You know the drill, Luey!”

His brother chuckled, the joke a familiar one, and set to work, drawing on it like Pidge had done, Lance watching him the entire time. Keith peeked over Lance's shoulder, but the shapes and colored blocks he saw didn't make sense.

He looked back to his own. The kids had followed Lance's orders and they let him pick the first pumpkin from the patch, supposedly the highest of honors. They ran through the rows, _ooh_ing and _ahh_ing out their suggestions, pointing at the biggest of the bunch or the ones a perfect shade of orange. Keith didn't see the point of being picky--or to make it last longer than he had to--and jerked up the first one that didn't have a patina of yellow rot maring one side.

Looking at it now, he had to agree with the kids: It was pretty puny.

He touched his fingers to the bumpy skin, and tried to think of what to carve. Nothing elaborate came to mind. Only easy, unclever faces with triangle eyes and teeth. Which, though perfectly acceptable, was already in the works on three other pumpkins down the table.

One being Rachel's. She carved hers lazily, her knife cuts hurried but well-placed from yearly practice. It was obvious she only joined the family because it was a ‘thing’ they always did, to not disappoint her niece and nephew, to keep Lance in high spirits. Keith's thoughts caught her attention, and she looked up, scowled, and made a point to jerk her knife free.

Juice slipped down the blade. Keith turned away.

He waited all morning for someone to find him and tell him to leave. There were gray areas of understanding, if Lance told his parents he was upstairs or if sleeping somehow locked his mind from Rachel's gift. Either way, Keith slept undisturbed until the sun fell behind the clouds and Lance's room took on the appearance of nightfall. He left the house through the second-story window, and he crept down to the forest to wait away the rest of the day, just in case.

Lance shifted and his hip rocked into Keith's. “So, what's yours gonna be,” he asked, peering down at the table. 

Keith lifted his shoulders. “Dunno. It's. . .been a while since I've done this. Last time, Shiro used one of those stencil things to poke out a design for me.”

“We have those too,” Lance brought up. His long arms made an easy task of fetching one of the booklets partially down the table. He passed it to Keith. “I’ll help you out. Luis takes forever on drawing things anyway.”

From down the table, Luis murmured, “I have ears, Lance.”

“I didn't say it was  _ bad _ , just that you do it.” Lance brushed him off. When he leaned back into Keith, he pressed his chest to his arm. A casual touch made without thinking. “Pick something out, and we'll get to work.”

Keith flipped open the booklet, but the printed designs couldn’t hold his attention over the warmth of Lance's body against his. Or the sudden, dropping feeling of missing Shiro. Lance glanced up at him, eyes gentle with understanding.

“. . . I'll just make a face,” Keith said and didn't meet any of the three looks sent his way.

“Are you sure?” This from Hunk. His pumpkin already looked like stolen artwork, and he hadn't even touched it with his knife yet. “I can whip up something for you.”

“No. It’s fine.” To make his point, he stabbed one of the small paring knives into his pumpkin, cutting hurriedly and haphazardly, ruining any other offers of help.

But it  _ wasn't _ fine. And they all knew it. Hunk and Pidge and Lance saw it in each jerking movement of his hand, the tension rippling in his arms. The pumpkin didn't stand a chance.

This wouldn't be the first year Shiro would miss his birthday. He'd been overseas for years, after all, fighting a war so distant it bordered more on myth than reality. Another Odyssey, the Iliad retold. Shiro became a legend in this small town for earning his badges of honor and for losing his arm, like some hero from a story. And that's how Keith thought of it: As a story. Until the day he saw the stump of Shiro's arm and the painful truth of it hit Keith hard in the gut. Nothing could rewrite what happened to Shiro. Not then, and not now.

It may hurt. It may make him feel awful and alone and forgotten. But he had to think of Shiro, of his pain, his loss. Shiro would come back when he was ready.

The heavy drop of Lance's pumpkin against the table snapped his attention back. And Lance’s too, judging by the way he jumped nearly out of his skin. 

Luis laughed and placed his hand down on Lance's shoulder. “Easy. I didn't even say ‘boo’.” He pointed to the pumpkin, the painstaking design, and Keith saw what it was meant to be from the start: A rocket speeding through a field of cut-out stars. “Remember, carve out the colored bits and you're solid.”

Lance's smile fell like noon, golden and bright and warming Keith all the way down to his toes. “Got it! You're literally the best!”

Luis patted Lance's hair. “I know. But, damn, it's nice to hear.”

Apparently that was a family thing, too. That self-assured confidence. The easy way they joked around. They were all similar in that way, and it linked them as family almost stronger than their matching features. 

A new pang of missing touched Keith's heart. Then Lance's. Keith knew it by the way Lance reached over the moment it hit, his hand laying over his. 

Keith squeezed his fingers and drew his hand away. “. . .why a rocket,” he asked, nodding towards the drawing.

“It's my go-to,” Lance started.

“Meaning he's done it for as long as we've known him,” Hunk finished.

“Every year,” Pidge agreed. “Lance won't carve anything else.”

Lance’s ears went pink in embarrassment. Keith didn't see why he would be. It made sense, given how Lance decorated his room. The love of it was evident now--Lance wore a navy shirt freckled with constellations, the remains of his spaceship battle smudged up his arm. In fact, it fit so well to who Lance was that anything else would be jarring.

“I like it,” Keith told him honestly. “It's very  _ you _ .”

Lance flushed even pinker. “Oh. Well. Thanks.”

Keith heard someone sigh. Then Hunk's even voice, reaching across the table, “Can I just say that this thing? Right here?” Hunk pointed between the two of them, and it was Keith's turn to redden. “Precious.”

Pidge snorted, saying in a joking way, “You mean ‘gross’.”

“Is that what we're calling it now?” 

Hunk’s full-belly laugh at the look Pidge shot him spread like an infection. First to Lance, of course, and then to Keith, and finally to a reluctant Pidge. The chorus of the four of them pleased the sky so much that it let its stubborn grip relax, and the first, tiny flurries spilled free over their heads.

Lance's gasp of delight caught Keith’s heart in its hands. Veronica smiled knowingly up at the clouds; the kids paused what they were doing, staring up, eyes wide as twin moons.

The McClain's didn't let that small thing scare them away. They toughed out the falling snow with smiles and scarves and the warmth of shared company. No one went inside until the last pumpkin was carved, and they'd set them up on display along the front porch, a museum showing of all their hard work.

Several faces grinned back with pointed teeth. Hunk's haunted house showed off its backlit windows, expertly rendered nearly-transparent phantoms and bat wings. Pidge's ghost turned out better than expected, a gnarled haunt of twisted limbs that Hunk praised. Luis' cursed tree looked real enough to touch. Rachel's vampire, though comical, filled Keith's belly with unease. There was a chicken from Lance's mom, a pumpkin from his dad, and monsters from the kids.

Lance's stood out amongst them, a lone ship against an orange star field. The light inside flickered in each made star, breathed life into them, made them real as the ones hidden in the sky that night. 

Keith’s was what pain would look like on the outside, if taken out in chunks and quick cuts. 

The snow touched them all the same.

Shivering and cold-toed, the family made their way inside, their chatter loud and full of laughter as they stepped up the porch, passing the new jack-o-lanterns as they went. For as many people, there were as many flames or lights, as many scenes, as many voices carrying around. The world was suddenly full to the brim with moving legs and shoulders, swinging hands and the two children sing-songing into the house. 

Lance glanced over. Pidge stayed behind at the table, gathering knives. Hunk finished sorting the last pumpkin seeds into a bowl for toasting. 

“What’s up?” Lance’s question wasn’t unexpected, it was the way he  _ said _ it, loudly, inclusively, drawing Pidge and Hunk’s attention up from their tasks.

Without turning, Keith glanced over at him. Snow caught in Lance’s hair, his wind-touched face pink from good conversation and the chill. Tiny clouds fluffed past his lips when he breathed. Keith made out the other two, their glances flicking between them, linking and thinking and drawing new conclusions.

“It’s nothing,” he answered. And Lance took his hand because ‘nothing’ meant ‘everything’ and ‘everything’ meant ‘I miss my family’. 

Keith slipped his fingers between Lance’s, thankful for the warmth of his palm pressed against his. Of their nearness. Of Hunk coming up soon after, slinging his arm around his shoulders. Of Pidge joining this loose chain of touching, his fingers snagging at the hem of Keith’s borrowed shirt.

This wasn’t the family he wanted. They’d never replace what he’d lost. He knew that like he knew Lance’s favorite color was blue, or that Pidge loved computers, or that love wasn’t strong enough to keep people in your life. 

But it was close. Close like Keith and Lance’s locked hands or the tight hug around his shoulders. A new type of wanting blossomed inside him that night, while snow whipped his cheeks and found its way down the collar of his shirt. 

“Let’s go inside,” Lance told him, tugging him forward by the hand. “Hunk, buddy, I’m in major need of your double hot chocolate. I can’t feel my fingers.”

Hunk gave all three of them one big, final squeeze. “You got it! Coming right up!”

They hurried towards the steps, belatedly following the rest of the family, as two things happened: The snow started falling harder, flurries evolving into fluffy, large flakes that swirled around the group like lost dancers. And the sounds of a car, gliding up the drive, tires crunching up the dirt road towards the farm house, high beams spotlighting the snow.

Four heads turned in its direction.

Lance dropped Keith’s hand, his feet carrying him towards the road. He squinted. Snowflakes melted on his cheeks. “Who the hell is that?”

Pidge shielding his eyes from white-bright light washing the yard. “. . .that looks like Dad’s car,” he said.

“I thought you were staying the night?”

“I am.” Pidge frowned and turned to look at Keith of all people.

Keith looked back, frowning because Pidge was. “. . .what?”

The car stopped when it reached them. Midnight black and sleek, glittering under the McClain’s dim porch light, the car reeked expense. The gentle purr of a fine-tuned engine under the hood, a faultless paint job, the smooth hum of the driver side window rolling down--this car could afford half the McClain household alone. Who else would drive that much money around?

Samuel Holt’s head appeared where the tinted glass had been. He smiled at them and leaned forward a bit, waving. “Hey kids.”

Pidge stepped over. “Dad? What’re you doing here?”

Like Pidge, Lance straightened suddenly and turned, looking back at Keith. His face was hard to read, but the smile that twitched at the corners of his lips caused Keith’s heart to stutter. Quicken. What was that all about?

“Well, I’ll be honest--felt a little like chasing the wind there for a bit.” Keith caught the way Sam glanced at him, a quick shift of his hazel eyes. “But it all worked out in the end. Sorry to interrupt. I had a delivery to make.”

Hunk clapped his hands. So he was in on it too. “A delivery, huh?”

The passenger door opened up. 

And out stepped Shiro.

The sight of his wide smile had Keith bolting across the yard. The warmth of his arm grabbed him up, drew him in and close. His aftershave filled Keith’s nose--warm spice--a scent like home.

“You’re back--” Keith pressed the wavering words into Shiro’s jacket along with his fingers. 

Shiro squeezed him tighter like he planned to make up for the two weeks he’d been away. “You say that like I’d miss your birthday.” 

Keith rocked back. “What?”

“I’m a little late, I know, but getting your gift’s taken me a little longer than I thought it would.” Shiro shrugged. He looked much better than he had at the Holt’s. Grief still darkened crescent moons under his eyes, pressed a gentle exhaustion to his shoulders, but when he smiled, it wasn’t forced. 

A gift? Keith pulled his hands back. From the yard, Lance and Pidge and Hunk watched. He wasn’t sure, but there may have been a pressure at the back of his neck, soft as a press of a hand, warm as a brush of lips. A tingling, his hair standing up. Anticipation? His and Lance’s, carrying across the small amount of steps between them.

“You didn’t have to get me anything, Shiro.” This, right here, was enough. Seeing him after weeks of absence-- _ this _ was everything Keith could want. His friends were at his back, his brother stood in front of him, and the shock of it, the overwhelming sense of  _ togetherness _ hit the air sharp as the breath Lance gasped in. “I don’t want anything.”

He already had everything he needed.

Shiro smiled that same calm smile. The smile that always eased Keith’s nightmares as a kid, or chased away his insecurities when they came knocking. The smile in the photograph propped up against the wall in a shack in the woods, the only relic of Keith’s scattered family he had left.

Keith dropped his eyes. And he witnessed Shiro stick his hand in his jacket pocket, searching for something inside.

“It’s not just for you.” 

He withdrew a single key. 

A key he pressed into Keith’s hand. 

His. To have. 

Keith looked back up at what that meant.

“Shiro, what--”

Again, that smile. Wider this time, the dimple in Shiro’s left cheek dipping in. “I ended the lease at the other apartment. . .” He wavered when he said it, but plowed on, tucking that pain deep, pressing through. “. . .and I got us something here. It’s not much, a little small, but it has two rooms. One for each of us.”

Keith’s heart punched into his throat.

His hand closed over the key, the end a small, sharp pain digging into his palm.

Shiro’s hand fell to his shoulder. “Happy birthday, Keith.”

He didn’t realize it until later that his body reacted on its own, his feet carrying him back into Shiro’s broad chest, his face buried against the rough fabric of Shiro’s sweater. Lance would tell him later, on another night they’d steal for themselves, that the fierce burn of Keith’s emotions brought tears to his eyes. 

To be fair, it brought tears to Keith’s eyes too.

A  _ home _ .

October had been kind to him, kinder than he deserved, and this new thing, this tiny weight in his hand and the pressure of Shiro’s arm curled around him. . .it was all at once too much and everything Keith had ever wanted. 

The snow lashed around them. The jack-o-lantern flames snuffed themselves out, blown into smoke by the wind. Shiro stepped back, and Keith knew what he was about to say by the look on his face.

It prickled like static when Shiro told him, voice pitched above the wind, something Keith hadn’t heard in over a year, since before his dad dove into a fire and didn’t come back out:

“Come on, Keith. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, editing this chapter: JeSUS, how long is this one??????
> 
> I guess when you wrote something so long ago, you kinda forget which chapters end up being 31 pages or 12 AHAHAHAH


	15. Chapter 15

Halloween night sent the McClain’s into a dizzying rush of finding costumes and stuffing bags of candy into several, oversized bowls stationed on a three-legged table on the porch. For the better part of the week, everyone pitched in with the decorating or the long list of preparations. Pinning the cotton spider webs in the corners of all the windows and doors fell on Marco. Rachel was put in charge of relighting the pumpkins as dusk fell, an orange-to-purple ombre crowding in the windows. Veronica helped Luis dress the kids in their costumes, each taking a turn wrapping Sylvio in his mummy costume. Lisa pined Nadia’s hair up in the specific way she wanted, and adjusted the headband antenna she wore until Nadia bounced restlessly out of reach. 

Lance spent the better part of the day putting together his own costume. As the designated ‘trick-or-treat supervisor’, he had to look the part. And as one never to take a role lightly, Lance dug around his closet for something to repurpose, to inspire, half-way between one idea and the next. Hunk and Pidge watched this frantic dance from Lance’s bed, with amusement, of course. It registered at the back of Lance’s mind, pushed aside as he tried to find what he needed.

“It’s just a costume,” Pidge told his back. “Chill.”

Lance crouched in his closet for the seventh time. One arm was naked, the other firmly stuffed in a shirt one size too small for his chest and three inches too short on his arms. One of his brother’s, passed down years ago. Lance shrugged out of it and tossed it to the floor. “Says you. You  _ bought _ a costume. Even Hunk made his own this year!”

Rather lazily, mind. Hunk wore one of his kitchen aprons on over his regular clothes, the front stained with fake blood. Yellow, rubber gloves swallowed his arms up to the elbows, the fingers drenched in red. Barely visible from the front pocket, the rounded handle of a fake knife stuck out.

Hunk shrugged. “I’m actually surprised you didn’t have something planned. You go hard for Halloween every year. It’s, like, your thing.”

“It’s been a weird one, and I lost track of time. So sue me.” Lance huffed and tossed another shirt to the floor. Nothing was working out.

Pidge pushed his glasses up his nose. He wore the same costume he always did. For the last six years, it was a running joke between the three of them, and a big middle finger to anyone that sneered at Pidge for being a ‘genius.’ 

He wore a starched white lab coat that hung down to the ankles of his black boots. Vinyl blotches stained the cuffs and hem in an obnoxious lime green. Pidge had sprayed his hair a powder silver, and finished the look with a clipboard stolen from his dad’s office, a stack of paper pinched beneath the clip--with actual, hand-penned graphs and notes, written down while Lance flocked around his room in utter distress.

Without glancing up from the newest note he was adding, Pidge suggested, “Just put the flannel back on. You can pretend you’re a werewolf or something. One of those ‘hidden in plain sight’ urban legends. Easy.”

“Classic,” Hunk agreed, admiring the sheen of red on his gloves.

“Boring and lazy, you mean.” Lance snapped the dresser drawer shut. He fell back against the floor with a groan. “I really screwed the pooch with this. I  _ knew _ I should’ve went with you to buy a costume.”

Pidge scratched something out. “I told you.”

Lance frowned.

Downstairs, he heard the rest of his family getting ready for the trick-or-treaters. The shuffle of their footsteps, the door slamming open and falling closed, music pouring out the banging notes of a misplaced organ. October’s final sunset even matched the mood; Lance admired it from where he lay, head tilted back, the sunlight’s last rays touching his face and painting him orange-and-purple too.

It was while looking at his window--opened a crack, like always--that he got an idea.

Rolling over, Lance pushed himself up and ran to his door, Pidge and Hunk glancing up at him at the quick  _ thump-thump _ of his feet.

“Where are you off to now,” Hunk called, and Lance hollered, “Hold on!” in reply as he sailed out of the room.

What he wanted was exactly where he remembered seeing it last, and after begging Sylvio for it (and promising an unfair amount of candy in the process that he’d have to somehow get), Lance ran back to his room.

“Got it.” 

He held up a set of fake, plastic teeth like they were a prize, snapping them at his friends. Hunk laughed and said, “Nice!” Pidge rolled his eyes and looked back to his over-complicated bar graphs and entirely un-fun,  _ actual _ math problems.

Teeth in, flannel on, distressed jeans to seal the deal, Lance glanced at himself in the mirror and felt a flush of pleasure at his idea. ‘Hidden in plain sight’ as Pidge had said. Lance grinned. The reflection showed off a pair of new, white fangs shoved uncomfortably in his mouth.

Just wait until Keith saw him. 

They’d match.

They’d talked about it a couple of nights ago, Lance slipping in the topic while they sat on Lance’s bed chatting late into the night. It’d been after midnight when Keith snuck in, face flushed, buzzing with a strong mix of anticipation and content. He wanted to talk about the apartment, about his new room and the small amount of things stuffed inside. Playing with Keith’s hands, Lance had listened to every single word with the biggest smile on his face.

Lance asked to come over; Keith said he wanted him to wait until after he had everything set up. Perfect. Cleaned and polished. It made Lance a little impatient to see it, but Keith’s genuine excitement over the entire thing endeared Lance so much he’d never admit it.

When the conversation turned to Halloween, Lance practically jumped to ask Keith to join them. For his part, Keith laughed and agreed, but whenever Lance brought up costumes, Keith would get serious and just tell Lance, “I dunno.”

So, really, Lance wasn’t expecting much.

Turning to his friends, Lance jerked a thumb towards the door, and said, “Let’s go wait on Keith downstairs. He said he’d be here around now.” Except the words came out heavy-tongued, distorted by the plastic. Lance spit the teeth out in his hand, making a face. “Man, I forgot what a pain these things are.”

‘I think those are also for  _ kids _ , Lance. They probably don’t fit.” Pidge jotted down one final thing and stood up, and by the way he smirked over at Lance, sure and teasing, his emotions aligned with it, made Lance almost ninety percent sure whatever Pidge wrote down was about him.

“Are you saying I have a big mouth,” Lance snapped back with no real anger.

“Of course not, buddy.” Hunk patted his shoulder as he passed. It wasn’t at all comforting with the slick of faux blood streaking up his hand. “Genetics say you have a big mouth.”

Lance managed one good punch to his arm before Hunk jogged out into the hall, trying and failing to stifle the surge of his laughter. The corner of Pidge’s mouth twitched up. Lance had to bite his own tongue to not give in to the champagne-bubble of their dual delight tickling in his stomach.

He loved them so much.

Downstairs proved to be in full whirlwind-mode.

Marco sat on the couch, picking long, stubborn strands of cotton from under his nails. Rachel had somehow set her nail polish on fire and was quickly stroking on another coat of black varnish to fix it. Veronica, kneeling on the floor, was as wrapped in as much gauze as Sylvio and looked less-than-happy about it. At least Luis carried his good cheer--his bright smile and quick hands finished the last of his son’s costume.

“There!” he said “King Tut couldn’t’ve done it better himself.”

Sylvio tested one arm, then the other. The wrappings stayed put. His tiny grin peeked from the dressings. It didn’t look half-bad considering it was a last minute change of plans. Someone had found the time to smudge black face paint around Sylvio’s eyes, finishing the caricature.

Lance patted the top of his head when he walked past. “Glad you decided to join us in our yearly pillage of Indigo Pull’s candy harvest, great Pharaoh. How was the trip from Egypt?”

His nephew glanced up at him, and that smile grew. “Depends on how much candy we get.”

Lance snapped his fingers. “Good answer.”

Nadia ran up next--or, buzzed might be a better term. Silvered wings flounced against her back, her dress a bouncy, taffeta nightmare of black-and-yellow stripes. Two, little antenna rocked on a band secured in her hair by pure optimism alone. 

She jumped the final steps up to Lance and gave a little twirl to show off her costume. Glitter winked across her cheeks. It lit up her arms in gold fire. “Do you like mine,  _ Tío _ ?”

He regarded her like a critic, chin propped in his hand, eyes squinted down in thought. “Hmm,” he hummed, exaggerating the show of it. “Who let this bumblebee inside the house? That’s not nice. Bees are supposed to be near flowers. Here. I’ll help you out.”

Lance caught her in his hands and tossed her up gently. With a shriek of delight, Nadia balanced in his arms, and Lance ran around the living room holding her up, making her fly when her wings failed to keep her up on their own.

The energy of the room seeped into him with every step. Though frantic, the other, more positive emotions filled it up, crashing around his senses like ocean waves against stone. Lance smiled and he laughed and he set Nadia to the floor just in time to see his mom let Keith into the house. 

He didn’t wear a costume like the others, only his normal leather jacket and dark jeans. Sometime over the last few days, Keith found the time to clean his boots, and the black leather shone. He stepped into the room following Mrs. McClain into the madness, and all at once, his violet eyes slid over to Lance’s. The blooming curl of his smile jerked Lance across the floor like he’d pulled an invisible rope.

They stopped short of grabbing each others hands. 

“You didn’t dress up,” Lance asked, looking him over. “Wow, rude! It’s Halloween!”

Keith shrugged, and he did the same thing Lance did but slower, taking his time. “You don’t look like you dressed up either?”

“That’s what  _ you _ think.” With a flourish, Lance popped the fangs back into his mouth and grinned at him. “Ta-dah! We match!”

Every light inside Keith flickered out in shock. Worry. He cut his eyes over to Pidge and Hunk--both helping the kids find their treat pails from the mess on the kitchen table--then back to Lance. His face paled.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“What? I thought it was funny,” Lance murmured. He hooked a finger in the fangs and tugged them out. “Not funny like a joke. Funny like ‘hey, cute, couple costumes.’” The explanation didn’t ease Keith’s dread. Lance shrugged and shoved the plastic teeth back into his pocket. “Okay, sorry. Nevermind. Stupid idea.” 

Keith winced. “Lance--”

Lance walked away, back to his niece and his nephew, kneeling down to talk to them instead. “We all ready to get some free candy?”

The door opened and shut.

Late to the game, Hunk stepped over, peering curiously at the door. “. . . did Keith just leave?”

“Yeah.” Not far, though. Lance felt him, sorting out his thoughts, nearby. He stood up. Little Nadia grasped his hand. “It’s a crowded mess in here. You know how he is. Probably was too much for him.”

Meaning  _ Lance _ was too much for him.

The little fangs dug against his thigh as he headed outside.

Indigo Pull loved its Halloweens. It never surprised to find the local diner bedecked in decorations, bloody decals stuck in the windows, slapped over the vinyl table tops. Local shops offered free handfuls of candy for the children that wandered in before closing, their employees free to dress-up to enjoy the holiday at its best. As Lance and his friends guided Nadia and Sylvio into town, he lost count of how many witches and ghouls and devils that walked past on the leaf-spackled streets. Pirates or colorful fairies or more mummies sauntered from house to house, bags and pillowcases clutched in their tiny hands. Parents wearing costumes of sleepless nights and dead-end jobs followed close behind, keeping an eye on the colorful streaks of their children jumping from porch to porch, door to door, place to place.

The plan had been decided in advance: Go to town first, then hit the small, clustered neighborhoods on the way back, go the long way around to pass Pidge and Hunk’s for optimal trick-or-treating results. The more candy, the better.

The four took turns in pairs leading Sylvio and Nadia up to doors or the abandoned, overflowing buckets of candy left out on front steps. Anywhere a porch light signaled someone was home or had left something to take, the kids demanded to go, and Lance always let them. Soon their little buckets were heavy, and Nadia passed hers around to whoever would hold it for her until they reached the next place, her empty hand finding Lance’s, or Hunk’s, or Pidge’s.

Since the small quip in the living room, Keith kept a step behind, lost in thought, caught up in his head so much Lance started feeling the disassociation too. He knew he hurt his feelings but not why exactly it cut that deeply. He waited until the rotation had Pidge and Hunk leading the kids up to the next house to ask him, as they stood alone on the street.

“So,” Lance began, turning to look at the side of Keith’s face. At the noise, Keith glanced over, expression schooled and calm. A lie. He raged inside as much as ever, a storm thrashing around with every passing second. “What’s up?”

Keith cocked a brow. “What?”

Lance pointed at his chest, drew a frantic circle in the air over his heart. “All that. Knots,” he blurted, then tried again, “I hurt your feelings.”

And Keith, Lance’s. 

The stoic mask Keith wore--his own costume, Lance decided--softened. Keith shrugged his shoulders up and the connection of their eyes snapped, Keith looking away first. 

“Oh. No. No, you’re fine.” 

Lance was starting to realize lying felt like a quick, sour squeeze in his stomach.

He folded his arms and leaned towards him. “Liar.”

Keith jerked. He looked back, away again, and finally folded his arms. “Okay.” Said because he was found out-- _ that _ was a different sort of squeeze, near the heart, just as sickening. “Maybe. . .a little.”

Lance opened his mouth, but Keith stole the moment, plowing on, the truth finally tumbling out of him, “It wasn’t even  _ that _ . It was at first, but it. . .all  _ this _ \--” Keith copied the gesture Lance had done, the circle over his chest. He grit his teeth, trying to sort out how he wanted say it, how it  _ needed  _ said, and just gave up, telling him, “--I hurt you too.” 

It was all around a mess.

By then, Hunk and Pidge came back, the kids running up. Nadia passed her candy bucket to Lance that time, and it weighed down Lance’s hand as they walked to the next house. Their conversation was put on hold.

But in a way, it was also all that was needed said. Lance didn’t realize it, but sometime after the next house, Keith regained that one step he’d stayed behind, and he started walking in stride with him. Their hands hung between them, and, at times, they brushed, knuckles catching against the others, slipping the thrill of these small touches all the way up Lance’s arm.

Keith and Pidge took the kids up the next walkway. When they were at the door, Hunk told Lance, “You two make up?”

Lance’s ears burned. “Mind your business, Hunk.”

“Your business  _ is _ my business, buddy. Best friend rules. You agreed to them in the first grade.” Hunk bumped his shoulder. “ _ Sooo _ ?”

Lance loved him so much he wanted to hit him. “You’re awful. It wasn’t even like a fight? Just a. . .misunderstanding. We’re fine now. Things happen, I guess.”

“Well, I’m glad you aired it out. It was getting a little stale with the two of you not talking.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t  _ that _ bad.”

Hunk didn’t let that go on for a second. “Oh, yeah it was. I thought I was going to die from the weird tension between you two.”

“Don’t exaggerate. It wasn’t like that.”

“It was and don’t tell me what to do.”

The other two came up. The kids flocked to Hunk. Nadia wanted held, and Hunk obliged without being asked, lifting her up in his wide arms while Keith took on the burden of her bucket. 

Pidge adjusted his glasses. “Gotta agree with Hunk here,” he said. 

Keith glanced down at the rainbow wrappers sticking out of bucket, directing all his attention there like it could give him a pass to miss the conversation. Lance wished he could do the same.

“Okay, we get it. Jeez, sorry we were ruining your night.” He placed his hands on his hips when he said it, and sighed so dramatically that the wind felt inspired and huffed down the road. Wind chimes giggled from a few yards down. Flags rippled, heavy fabric snapping in the gust. Lance shuddered. “Jesus it’s cold. If we’re done picking apart this whole thing, can we go? We still have half of the valley to get to.”

Okay. So he might’ve exaggerated. It wasn’t  _ that _ much. 

They’d already hit downtown and a generous handful of subdivisions. All that was left was heading up the hill. The Holt’s, Hunk’s, and the few houses between.

It took five minutes, maybe less, to reach the Holt’s wide, sprawling yard. Sickly green lights twined around the bars of the wrought iron fence, flickering like mock candle flames against the dull, black metal. A fog machine belched out clouds of sweet-smelling smoke over the grass. Unassuming scarecrows leaned around a few of the trees; rippling ghosts found themselves strung in the branches, snagged before they could reach the house. Music seemed to pour from all around, a magic Lance knew came from small, stone-dressed speakers dotting the yard.

The Holt’s always put on a good show. They loved the spirit of the whole thing. Pidge joined the kids at the door, and instead of knocking or ringing the bell, he pushed it open and went inside. Colleen stood just inside the orange-lit lobby, wearing a costume similar to Pidge’s in the sense that it borrowed the same, chaotic energy of a restless mind.

Her blonde hair stuck out in odd angles, sprayed to stick. Exaggerated bags were drawn under her eyes. Ink blotches discolored the tips of her fingers. A writer, maybe. A different type of scientist. 

She smiled at the crowd of them, and waved them inside after Pidge. “Come in, come in! Warm up for a few minutes, kids.”

They all poured in, even Keith, though he stuck behind, near the door, eyes cast out the window.

It was a shock to be in the Holt’s estate again. Those long months felt more like years. The woodsy, clean smell of the house filled Lance up. It was like coming home after a long,  _ long _ time away.

Colleen didn’t spare any expense--when did the Holt’s ever? She took the giant bowl from were it sat on a table near the door, and lowered it down for the kids to pick their candy. They each grabbed one fistful each, a ‘Lance rule’ as they called it, which meant it was something he unconsciously carried with him since his own times trick-or-treating. But that wouldn’t do, not here, where those modest rules didn’t apply.

With a wink, Mrs. Holt added her own handfuls to their buckets, and once the kids were giggling in light of this sudden bounty, she stood back up and held the bowl out for Hunk and Lance to ravage.

“Keith, honey, you can have some too,” she said, when she noticed he didn’t come forward.

Lance looked up in time to see Keith’s shoulders jump.

“Oh, no, that’s okay. Thank you,” he said politely, as Colleen passed the bowl to him anyway.

“For the road, then,” she said, and Keith hesitantly took a handful of candy, murmuring another small  _ thank you _ . 

They spent a few more minutes warming their hands (and in Lance’s case,  _ hearts _ because,  _ man _ , he didn’t realize just how much he’d missed coming over to Pidge’s). Then they herded out the door, back into the chilly night, Pidge following them out.

Lance was the one to ask, “You coming?”

Pidge shrugged his shoulders up, his coattails flapping in the breeze, “Might as well.”

The kids already had more than enough candy, but on they went, up the steady slope of the hill, leaving the spooky ambiance of the Holt’s haunted yard behind them. It was in the dark space between their hands that Keith reached over and pressed his small bounty of candy into Lance’s palm. Discreetly, it found its way into one of the buckets, no one any wiser to it. 

The wind picked up the further they went along, and by the time they made it past the graveyard--hurriedly at Hunk’s request--Lance was shuddering in the thin flannel he wore. Everyone seemed to be feeling it. Hunk rubbed his arms with his sticky gloves. Pidge jerked his coat closed around him. The kids complained about chilly fingers.

Save Keith. He wandered along unaffected, hands jammed in his coat pockets, a slight tilt to his mouth that gave away his amusement.

Months and months ago, when Lance’s Empathy started to thrive, there was an exact moment he came to recognize as The Beginning: Standing in front of Lion Castle’s wide, open gate, the old plantation house alive with warm, yellow light and soft song. A night filled with Allura’s mournful singing, and Lance’s free-falling tears.

So to see it alight again, doors open, the wrap-around porch cleared and cleaned and inviting, wasn’t shocking anymore. Ever since that first time, Lance had never seen the gate closed. The metal lion head, the one that sank its sharp teeth into Lance’s hand, kept to the bushes at the side, buried, forgotten.

Allura hadn’t decorated in the sense the Holt’s had. The yard was full of the same, time-worn statues and broken fountains that had always been there, and those alone inspired more terror than any of the scarecrows stalking the Holt estate. Colored lights were strung up in a skeletal tree near the house, the white and violet bulbs like tiny, glowing flower buds. The pathway leading to the porch had been carefully lined with solar lights, their halos stepping stones leading in and out. The kudzu was missing, clipped and escorted off the second-level balcony, providing a full, glamorous view of the flaked paint and disrepair that still needed fixed. Rocking chairs--these looked new, pristine white--swayed by themselves, pushed by the wind.

And the people. The yard was full of them. There were school kids and parents and teenagers all milling around, wandering up to the door expectantly. A man Lance recognized as Allura’s uncle stood on the porch, dressed in some outdated military uniform, passing out candy and stories and jokes to any who came up. His energy carried across the lawn in the bright tenor of his voice.

Allura wandered the yard, a ghost stalking these old lands. Her dress--a sheer, layered masterpiece of ivory linen--billowed around her with each step. Her hair was pinned up in loose, waterfall curls. Rings glittered on her fingers, no doubt real gold, gemstones flashing under any wash of light they caught. As always, her trademark necklace hung at her throat.

She smiled when she saw them pass through the gate, and waved them over. “I was wondering if I’d see you four tonight. And, why, hello! I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you two?” Allura crouched down to eye-level; her skirts pooled around her in the dirt, frothy as sea foam.

Nadia’s eyes went wide. “A princess,” she gasped. Sylvio ducked behind Lance’s long legs.

Lance laughed, not unkindly, and pressed his hand to the top of her head. “This is Nadia, my niece. And the mummy hiding behind me is my nephew, Sylvio.”

Allura extended a hand, gave an elegant head bow. It was easy to see where Nadia got confused. The dress Allura wore, the jewels winking at her fingers, didn’t take away from the impression. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Allura. Have you two had fun tonight?”

Sylvio nodded shyly. Lance urged him forward.

“She isn’t going to bite you. Go say  _ hi _ ,” he told him. Sylvio looked as betrayed as a cat led to bathwater. “Seriously, you’ve been talking to strangers all night! What’s gotten into you two?”

“That’s all right.” Allura chuckled, rose, her hands catching her flowing skirts. “I bet you two would like some candy, wouldn’t you? You see that man up there?” She pointed. “That’s Coran. Tell him I sent you and he’ll give you lots of candy.”

Nadia snatched her bucket out of Pidge’s hand. “Lots and lots?”

Another small laugh. “Of course. Lots and lots.”

That was all Nadia needed to dart across the yard. A little reluctantly, Sylvio followed after his sister, hollering at her to, “Wait up!”

Lance folded his arms. If  _ he _ was cold, Allura surely had to be. But she seemed not to notice the bite in the wind. She looked back to them once the kids made it to the porch, and commented on Pidge and Hunk’s costumes.

“A mad scientist,” Allura noted, and for Hunk’s, “And that one fellow from that Showtime show?”

“Dexter?” Allura nodded. Hunk wiggled his hand. “Kinda. But, like, my inspiration was ‘dissatisfied housewife discovering occultism’.”

“Wait.” Lance peered at the red smudges on Hunk’s yellow gloves. “ _ That’s _ the story? A chicken-killing housewife? You didn’t even put on a wig, man.”

“One: Look at your costume and try implying mine’s lazy again. And two: I literally just said ‘dissatisfied’.” Hunk pressed his hands to the top of his hair. “Dissatisfied at how bad her haircut went at the mall kiosk barber.”

Pidge snorted. “We should’ve known it was something like that. It’s Hunk we’re talking about.” To Allura, to Keith, he provided, “It’s his thing. Last year he dressed up in a bathrobe and slippers and a wizard hat--as a ‘wizard on laundry day’.”

Hunk grinned. “Yeah, I remember that one. Super comfy.”

A pinch appeared between Allura’s fine brow. “Oh. I see. Bath _ robes _ .” 

“Exactly.”

Lance rubbed at his arms. “It was actually pretty funny watching the way people looked at him. They didn’t know what to make of it.”

Allura glanced over at him. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your costume supposed to be? A lumberjack, maybe?”

“The flannel is a bit confusing, yeah, I get that.” For the first time that night, Lance pulled out the fake teeth from his pocket. He jammed them quickly in his mouth, grinned big to show them off, them took them out again. “Supposed to be a vampire. . .but I can’t talk with these things in my mouth.”

Beside him, Keith tensed again. Just for a fleeting moment that touched against Lance’s perception of his emotions, and away right after, snuffed out. Lance jammed the stupid things back in his pocket.

Lance tilted his head at her. “And what about you? Did Nadia guess right? A princess?”

She certainly looked the part, so when she shook her head, it came as a surprise. “No. Actually, I found this while cleaning out one of the upstairs rooms. I liked it so much I decided to dress like one of the past ladies of this house might have.”

For the first time since the Holt’s, Keith piped up, “You look like a ghost.”

And so she did. She liked the idea of that too. The pleasure of it broadened her smile. “A ghost fits just fine.”

Allura led them up to the porch, where the kids stood listening to Coran tell an animated story composed more of arm movements than sentences. They looked bored, but growing up with seven separate parental figures at least gave them proper manners. They kept their side-long glances to a minimum. By the looks on their faces, Lance could tell they hadn’t gotten the ‘lots and lots’ of candy Allura promised, which probably kept them from wandering away. A good move on Coran’s part, if you asked Lance. Smart.

Before they crowded on the porch with the others, Keith snagged the back of Lance’s shirt. It was quick, a mild tug, a step sent backwards almost into Keith’s chest.

“Hey, hold on,” he said, and Lance half-turned to look at him.

He cocked a brow. “Yeah? What’s up?”

A shiver of uncertainty. Awkwardness, a new type of jumble. Lance blinked at Keith while he tried to sort himself out.

“I--” Keith faltered. When words wouldn’t do, he gave up and jerked his jacket off. He held it out.

Lance looked at it. His cheeks went warm. “What’s that for?”

Keith found his voice in his impatience. This embarrassed him, for whatever reason. Lance recognized the emotion, but as usual, the reason it sprouted up could be anything. Especially with Keith. 

“You’re cold,” he told him, and pushed the jacket against Lance’s fumbling hands. “I noticed it at the Holt’s but I. . .I didn’t know how to go about. . .this.” He frowned and looked down at his boots. That embarrassment spiked in Lance’s heart, plucked from the air.

“Oh. Oh, okay.” Lance shrugged the jacket on. The heat trapped in the lining flooded over him, warmed some of the chill off his shoulders. Keith’s woodsy smell filled his nose. He could die in this jacket and be fine with it. “. . .thanks.”

A corner of Keith’s mouth twitched up. He shoved his hands in his pant pockets. In that moment, with the moon a gentle touch at the crown of his head, the wind rifling through his dark hair with insistent fingers, he was so absolutely beautiful that Lance wanted to scream.

Gentle notes of pleasure played like a song at the back of Lance’s mind--Keith’s. It matched the smile. 

“Well, ain’t that just  _ cute _ .”

Like twigs breaking underfoot, every single one of those good feelings snapped.

Lance jerked. He didn’t need to look to see who it was--he recognized the tone of that sneer the moment it hit the air. But he looked anyway, and he saw Griffin and his gang of friends coming towards them. 

They didn’t wear costumes, only expressive masks of open disdain.  _ Feeling _ it lurched up Lance’s throat, bitter as bile, sour as old milk. He wanted to retch over the grass. His own stubborn dislike of Griffin kept him pinned where he stood.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Lance snapped. “They let you out without a chaperone this year? I’m shocked!”

Griffin remained collected behind a not-so-pleasant smile. His right-hand man, Kinkade, glowered at Lance over the sharp shrug of Griffin’s shoulders. Their other two friends, Rizavi and Ina, shared a knowing look.

“ _ Says _ the chaperone,” Griffin intoned, and his oil-slick stare slipped across the yard towards the kids. “How’s babysitting going?”

Just the way he said it made Lance hook his hands into fists. Keith shuffled a step beside him, inching that much closer. It was a challenge, a dare, to speak up about it again. The energy rolling off Keith was all hot, spitting sparks, flames a breath from catching in the kindling. 

“What’s your problem?” Keith’s voice was as measured and petulant as Griffin’s, mocking. The muscles in his arms tensed, jumping beneath his shirt.

Griffin caught Lance looking, measured the scant distance between Lance’s hip and Keith’s hand. The jacket was damning enough, the scene of Keith passing it over, but that small thing turned out be what pushed him over. Disgust ransacked Lance’s belly, heaved and spider-crawled over every inch of him. 

Unconsciously, he twitched back the one step Keith had taken forward, separated them from the mistake of brushing hands.

Keith glanced at him, and it only deepened his growing anger. Lance met his eyes without meaning too.

The fire caught.

“My God, there’s  _ kids _ out here. Have some decency. No one wants to witness  _ that _ .” Griffin made a gesture at the two of them, his face twisting up. 

“No one says you have to look,” Keith told him cooly. 

“It’s hard not to with you two putting it on display. Showing off. It’s disgusting.” 

Lance clenched Keith’s jacket tighter around himself in defiance. Distantly, he felt Hunk recognize the trouble, and Pidge’s old fear punching against his racing heart, Allura’s cool dislike. Their advancing footsteps hit the grass. “Come on, Keith. Let’s just go. Screw this guy.”

Keith wouldn’t look at him. “No. We’re not doing anything wrong.  _ He _ is. If he’s got a problem, he can get over it or leave.”

“You don’t get to decide that. It’s not your house, sweetheart.”

Oh, the way that word slithered out had Keith’s hackles raised in an instant. Lance grabbed him by the wrist to keep him still. His arm shook under his hand.

“No,” came Allura’s clear voice. She strode up to them, skirts swirling, her head held high and straight, Hunk trailing a step behind. Pidge stayed by the porch, with the kids, but the glance of his face aligned with his spite and worry.

Allura turned her icy stare to Griffin, flicked it effortlessly between each of his friends. “But it is  _ mine _ . If you have a problem with my friends, James, I’m sure you remember where the gate is.” A gold-ringed hand waved out, sleeves drifting, pointing towards the road. Gemstones were small, twinkling embers beneath the moon. “But if you’re finding yourself lost, might I suggest following the lighted path? Or I can have my uncle escort you to the road.”

Her tone suggested he picked one, and quickly.

Griffin backpedaled at once. “I’m not starting anything,” he promised, sounding as believable as a snake oil seller. “I’m only worried that certain virtues--”

Hunk leaned towards him, indignant. “ _ Virtues? _ ”

Kinkade advanced a step forward, and that one thing weighed the balance of the situation. He stood in front of Hunk like Griffin stood before Keith and Lance. Each of them were coiled, knuckles tight. Keith practically vibrated where he stood, his quaking traveling up Lance’s arm physically and in the empathetic rush of his adrenaline. Lance understood, that at that very second, the only thing keeping Keith from rushing across the grass was the grip Lance had around his wrist.

Allura almost laughed. “I heard what you were saying. I won’t have you speaking to my friends like that.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Griffin said, in that slow, unconcerned drawl of his. It was an act--Lance could tell otherwise. He sensed annoyance and fury threatening to break past. “Calling  _ these _ guys your friends.”

“And I don’t believe I asked for your opinion,” Allura shot back. “So what you think doesn’t matter.”

That hit James deep. One of his brows twitched a little out of place. Beside him, Rizavi lifted her hand and swatted the back of his shoulder. She, at least, seemed to see this was heading nowhere but to a dangerous place.

“Griffin,” she urged. “It’s not worth it. Let’s go.”

Lance opened his mouth to agree, but Hunk shook his head.  _ Stop it _ ,  _ don’t antagonize _ , his look read. Lance clenched his teeth. This anger wasn’t his own anyway. It was Keith’s and Allura’s and Griffin’s, all battling inside him, trying to burn him into action. 

With an air of indifference, Griffin shrugged his shoulders. He broke away first, his hands lifted up. “Fine, you’re right. It’s a shame, though, you know,” he spoke to Allura then. “People like to talk. They’ll eat it up that you support. . .” And here his eyes fell on Keith again, and Lance, right beside him. Lower, to where they touched, hand-to-wrist. “. . . _ these _ kinds of people.”

Keith jerked his arm away. “What’s  _ that _ supposed to mean,” he growled, and he was gone before Lance could pull him back.

They were nearly the same height, Griffin just a hair taller, but it was Keith, his balled fists hanging at his sides, that stood taller then, his anger unmatched. 

Griffin’s lip curled. “Take a guess.” He glanced at Lance, at Hunk, at Pidge watching this all from the protection of the porchlight. The look he turned back to Keith could curdle milk. “Or how about you take your pick. Who should we start with? Katie Holt and her little game of dress-up, maybe? Or how about you? You and your family full of nothing but a bunch of fa--”

Keith’s fist slammed the word right out of Griffin’s mouth. 

Griffin jerked back, spat a red spray to the dirt. When he looked back up, his eyes were manic. His barred teeth shone pink in the light. Blood rolled down his chin.

Lance lost track of what happened after that.

Somehow Griffin and Keith ended up on the ground. They rolled, their hands flew and hit and missed. Lance heard his own voice call out Keith’s name, registered that Hunk stepped forward, and then time hiccuped. Paused. As Griffin landed a hard punch right to Keith’s nose in the half-second Keith’s attention wavered.

The  _ snap _ of it brought Lance rushing back. Sped time to catch up. The sight of pain twisting Keith’s face, the blood rushing past his lips into his own mouth, it woke something up. Something furious.

Something  _ dangerous _ .

With a howl, Keith drove his knee up into Griffin’s gut, lodged his weight of him off easily. No,  _ effortlessly _ . Too quick. From somewhere, Allura shouted at them to stop. Lance heard a soft cry from the porch. Kinkade stooped down to help Griffin up from the grass.

It was happening again. The anger and worry and every other bad feeling,that had a name and didn’t, came crashing into Lance. He was an empty bucket and they were water, pouring into him, filling him, overflowing. In a panic, he reached out to Keith, latched all his attention on him, and it was a good thing he did.

For the past week, Lance noticed nothing unusual lingered in the knot of Keith’s emotions, nothing like his old, almost-consuming hunger.

But it was there now. Suddenly, all at once. 

It came back to life as Keith looked up, wiping the free-flowing blood from his nose with the back of his hand. Lance saw the way he stared at it. The exact second his pupils started to narrow into slits.

_ No _ \--

Lance didn’t think--he acted automatically, rushing in to the space between where Griffin stood, propped in Kinkade’s lifting hands, and where Keith started to push up from the grass. He dropped right in front of him, grabbed Keith’s face in his hands and forced him to look at him.

Keith’s eyes were amethyst and fluorite, splintered and changing. His upper lip started to bulge with the telling swoop of his fangs.

“Keith, stop,” he begged. Keith’s eyes flashed away from his, towards Griffin. The whites of his eyes began to yellow. Lance turned his face again. “Listen to me.  _ Listen to me _ . It’s not worth it. It’s not  _ worth it _ !”

He could tell he wasn’t getting through. It wasn’t that Keith didn’t hear him--it was that everything else was louder and drowned him out. Lance felt everything, the frothing, demanding press of it, the confusion and the hurt and boiling rage. It was like in the forest, the same thing, only compacted small enough to weigh each one of Keith’s punches and kicks.

Frantically, Lance grabbed at it. He tangled his fingers in all those bad, awful things and tried to dismantle them. Just enough to keep Keith from tearing past him and doing something he couldn’t take back.

It took seconds, only seconds. By the time Keith sucked in a shaking breath, his eyes focusing on Lance  _ finally _ , their normal dark plum, Griffin had just regained his footing and straightened out of Kinkade’s hands.

“This is exactly what I was talking about,” he said, which sounded funny spoken around a swelling lip. He spat a glob of pink spit to the grass, his tongue working in his mouth, feeling for other places his teeth tore into. 

Allura walked right up to him. Her hands flew, found Griffin’s chest, her nails stabbing him a couple, staggering steps back. “I said  _ leave _ ,” she warned. “I won’t ask you again.”

Lance heard Griffin’s scoff. “He threw the first punch.”

“And you threw the last,” Allura snapped. Her anger heated her tone, shook in her folded fingers. 

Griffin looked ready to argue. Or to hit something again. His eyes went to where Lance and Keith were on the dirt, then up, towards the porch. Allura’s uncle headed towards them, pace brisk, hands folded behind his back as he walked. He looked every part of his costume--a true military man, worth every one of the shining medallions pinned to his jacket. And in the dark hollows of the night, it spooked Griffin into leaving.

He spat once more at Keith’s feet. “This isn’t done.”

Keith rocked up, hands punching the ground. But Lance held him back as much with his hands as with his whispered, “ _ Don’t. _ ”

Keith glanced at him, felt his shaking, and sank back down.

They left, all four of them. Griffin stalked through the gate without looking back. Kinkade, at the rear of their little troupe, paused and glared at them before Ina touched his wrist and he fell in step behind her. Rizavi alone at least had the decency to look ashamed.

Lance registered the second they stepped out of range like a pressure popping in his ears. 

He sagged forward, covering his eyes with his hand. A set of boots settled in the grass closeby.

“Well that looks like quite the mess,” sounded a voice near Lance’s ear.

Lance jerked and turned, and was greeted with the sharp line of Coran’s profile. He looked as different from Allura as Keith did from Hunk. If they really were family, it didn’t show in Coran’s ginger mustache and hair or his paler, time-lined face. Only their eyes were alike, that bright candy blue.

He crouched down beside the two of them, examining Keith’s nose. “It looks broken, my boy. If I may?”

Keith dropped his hand. The blood had stopped flowing at least, but Keith’s hurried attempts to wipe it off left rusty marks all the way down his throat. The collar of his shirt darkened from it. His hand was smeared red down to his wrist.

“It’s fine,” Keith said. It was hard to understand, graveled into nearly a growl. He went to stand up again, and this time, Lance didn’t hold him back.

Coran rose with him. “At least come inside to wash up.” Here, his expression smoothed out, and he glanced back, towards the gate, twisting the ends of his mustache between his fingers. “I didn’t think it would escalate into a brawl that quickly. I’m sorry I didn’t come down sooner.”

“Don’t worry, Coran.” Allura had regained her composure. She faced Keith. The skin around her eyes tensed in worry. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I'm fine,” Keith told them all again. And none of them believed it for a second.

Hunk helped Lance up, for no other reason than to be closer to him, to do his own soft study of Lance’s still-quivering hands. “Don’t get me wrong here, like, I don’t do fighting, don’t like it, but  _ man _ , nice punch, Keith.” 

“I wish you would've knocked out some of his teeth.” Pidge leaned around Hunk, surveying the damage of Lance's tense expression and Keith's bloodied face. His conflicting emotions washed over Lance, all expected, all forgiven.

The kids were at his sides, Nadia a small anxious bee running forward to grab Lance's hand. Sylvio stepped to Keith, eyes turned up and wide. A small ‘ _ oh _ ’ breathed past his lips, partly horrified, partly awed.

Lance offered his free hand to his nephew, placed it comfortingly on his shoulder. 

Keith absently rubbed at his nose again. Lance glanced over and their eyes met. The worry was both of theirs, born from the same, sinking realizations they passed in that look. “Next time I will,” Keith promised, and his tone left no room for question.

Lance shuddered.

Keith would do it. His anger was pure, molten copper. It burned to sense, scalded in the mirrored, dull ache of Lance's own nose, his unmarred knuckles. Lance didn't throw or catch a single punch, but he stood there, feeling like the fight had been his.

Dropping his hands, Lance went to Keith, finally taking in the ruin of his face, the dried blood, the stains coloring his skin. The bridge of his nose tilted at an unnatural angle. Furious red bruises fanned out towards his cheeks, already deepening at the center a throbbing blue-black. Another, lighter scuff bloomed at the base of his throat, a misguided hit to his collarbone.

Lance touched Keith's bloody hand aware of the others watching him. When he spoke, it was to Coran, bringing up his offer. “Do you mind if we borrow your bathroom?” Keith shot him a look. Lance met the challenge in it. “What? You want to walk around like  _ that _ ?”

For Keith, it didn't matter or bother him at all. And why would it, all things considered.

But because it bothered Lance, because Lance wore his upset openly in each twist and turn of his expression, Keith dropped his eyes. Their hands folded together.

Coran clapped his hands, once and firm, a  _ pop _ of noise. “Of course! Right this way!” He pivoted on the toe of his boot and marched across the lawn, the rest falling in step behind him.

Apparently, the way Lance phrased his question--his ‘we’ inclusive to Keith--and Coran's answer were enough to permit Keith to walk inside the house. He did hesitate on the threshold, expecting something to happen, but as Lance stepped through the door, their hands still locked by the fingers, Keith went inside. The touch of his bemusement made Lance smile a little for some reason.

All his life, Lion Castle had been locked away, a mystery tucked in a shift of concealing kudzu and distance. Until recently when he scaled over the hedges to peek through a window, that was all he knew. And those small glimpses at this giant plantation house didn't prepare Lance for being inside it. All his imaginings didn't do it justice.

The first thing Lance noticed was the heavy smell of age. Top notes of camphor and dust and wood rot, sweetened with the newer scents of fresh linen, roses blooming from white vases. Old tables flanked the doors, corners rubbed smooth, tops scratched, brass handles polished to a clean shine. The entryway was a large expanse of open space, leading to a curved staircase further back, a doorless arch leading off to the right into a den area, the left branching into another hallway. Allura led the others into the den, her skirts a whispered hush over the floorboards. Paintings were fixed to the walls, huge, gilded frames casting their shine around the room. The wood floor creaked, soft in places, sinking delicately beneath Lance's feet as he followed Coran beyond the stairway. He reached out, unable to help touching his fingertips to the smooth, curled railing.

It was as beautiful as the Holt's. Older. The gentle reminders of its disrepair showing through all the new and vintage items brought in to hide it. To make this place a home.

Keith squeezed Lance's hand.

Coran pushed open a small door Lance nearly missed, and flipped on a light. The jarring, white glare of newer bulbs filled the narrow bathroom. With a flourish of his gloves, Coran pointed to the counter. “Take a seat, if you would, and I'll take a look at that nose of yours.”

“Really, I'm fine,” Keith murmured, though he pulled himself up on the countertop to sit like he'd been asked.

“I mean, have you taken a good look at yourself? All this?” Lance gestured around his face. “It's pretty gross.”

Keith sank back against the wall. He lifted a brow, his mouth twitching up in a cocksure smirk. “Is it? Did Griffin look worse?

Coran took a first aid kit from behind the mirror, placing it carefully beside Keith. He snapped it open, mustache twitching around a dulcet chuckle. “I'm afraid not. His pride might be a little worse-for-wear, though, if that's any consolation.”

Keith shrugged. Lance squeezed himself as close to the counter as the narrow bathroom allowed. He was in Coran's way, but instead of insisting Lance move, he worked around him, even passing Lance a dry washrag.

“Wet that for me, if you would, lad?”

Lance took it and turned, leaning over Keith's lap to access the sink. While he did this, Coran, chin propped in his hand, examined the line of Keith's nose. Lance passed him the rag once it was damp.

Carefully, Coran started rubbing the blood away, one smudge at a time, Lance hovering at his elbow, eyes on Keith's face. Keith’s discomfort started to build under this stranger’s attention.

Lance caught Keith's fingers in his, fingertips barely touching in the hidden shadow cast by Keith's hip.

Coran hummed in thought. “I suppose I made a mistake. Your nose looks as good as fine. Little battered, and that bruise will be a lovely shade of black by morning, but I don't think any real harm was done.”

Not broken. 

Not  _ anymore _ .

Dropping the dirty rag in the sink, Coran grabbed another and wet it down himself this time, ringing the out excess water with a quick twist of his hands. This one he handed out to Lance and witnessed the two boys snap their hands apart like they'd been caught doing something wrong.

Coran’s expression softened. Lance didn't know him well enough to understand the feelings he put out, only enough to grasp his kindheartedness. “No need to worry,” he said at Lance's look. “I assumed you'd rather do it yourself.”

Keith, out of the two, spoke up. “Thanks,” he said, and Lance breathed out a sigh, gently pressing the rag to his nose. Keith flinched.

“No need,” Coran told them again. He dug a bottle of peroxide from the kit, some cotton swabs, bandages, if needed. “Allura speaks highly of you both. And I can see that you two are worth every word of it. It's in my experience--and I'm not afraid to say I have more than my fair share of that--that people are most cruel towards those they don't understand.”

Lance's shoulders sagged. “Griffin doesn't understand shit about anything.”

“Doesn't mean he gets to talk like that,” Keith mumbled, closing his eyes as Lance cleaned his face as gently as his hands allowed.

“It doesn't, no,” Coran agreed. “It won't make him stop either. Or take the time to evaluate his way of thinking.”

“Are you trying to tell me just to ‘get over it’? That ‘people will just be like that’?” Lance scrubbed down Keith's tilted chin, still boiling with leftover anger. Or maybe not. Maybe this was his own, freshly born from these implications. “Because I'm sick of that song. I'm sick of people judging us--this whole stupid town is like that, Griffin, his friends, that lady at the diner. It's not  _ fair _ . I'm not. . . _ this _ isn't wrong!”

Fingertips brushed the underside of Lance's wrist. He blinked, glanced up, and found solace waiting for him in Keith's deep eyes. It took everything in Lance not to lean into him and seek the comfort he'd give in other ways.

Coran’s small smile edged into his voice. “I wasn't implying any such thing, my boy. Not at all. What I’m saying is, if I may impart a little more wisdom on the matter: Don’t ever stop hitting back.” 

Right then and there, Lance decided he like this Coran guy an awful lot.

“Now,” he went on to say, glancing between Lance and Keith. “While you finish that, I’ll go see if I have a spare shirt you can change into.”

Keith leaned forward to protest, his mouth falling open and everything, and Coran smartly waved it aside and was out of the room before Keith had the chance, the steady  _ clip-clip-clip _ of his boot heels trailing down the hall.

Lance tossed the rag in the sink with the other.

The bathroom didn’t feel as small with just the two of them. Coran took up more space than just physically--his voice carried, his deep caring filled the very air,  _ became  _ the air. Lance had never felt anything like it before; it was something Keith experienced any time he and Lance were together. It was right  _ now _ .

Lance reached up and touched his fingers to Keith’s cheeks. Keith, guessing at what he wanted, leaned into that soft touch, eyes falling shut again.

It. . .it didn’t look good. The bruises were darker, accelerating into blues and purples, the bridge of his nose inky black. Lance drew his finger around the edge of it, the colors fading off into green, yellow like it was healing. It  _ was _ healing, faster than it should. Someone would notice if they looked a little too closely for a little too long. Lance gave it two days before any signs of it faded from sight.

“Does it hurt,” Lance asked. He held onto Keith’s face a second longer, just to do it, then let go.

Keith sat back against the wall again. He looked to Lance and held his stare. “Not really. Not anymore. I think. . . “ He glanced over at the door, dropping his voice a bit, both of them straining to hear Coran’s returning footsteps. “. . .I think it  _ was _ broken.”

Lance shot him a look. “You  _ think _ ? I’m pretty sure Pidge heard it snap from the porch.”

“. . .Oh. So you. . .you heard it?”

It was Lance’s turn to lower his voice, “ _ And _ felt it. A little. There was a lot going on but. . .I saw it, Keith. There’s no way around it.”

Keith touched the center of the bruise, fingering the smooth line of his nose. Even that had changed in the last few minutes--when they entered the house, it was bent a little crooked, didn’t look right. He frowned.

“That’s weird.” Keith slid off the counter without warning. His feet nearly landed on Lance’s toes, and they certainly bumped together, Keith’s chest lodging against Lance’s shoulder, their arms brushing. Lance stepped back.

“Careful--”

But Keith wasn’t paying attention.

He turned toward the mirror, taking it by the corner and snapping it shut. In the time it took to latch, Lance had the thought,  _ It’s not going to show his reflection _ . But, no, it did. The glass showed Keith’s battered face looking back at him, and Keith used this to finally see what everyone else had. 

“. . .it is healing pretty fast, isn’t it,” Keith asked, to no one in particular. Lance peeked over his shoulder, their eyes magnets and drawn to one another. “My hands didn’t do this. That took a whole week to heal.”

The only thing that’d changed between then and now was one thing and one thing only. It dawned on Keith exactly at the same time it did Lance, when Coran’s boots drummed his approach.

“Here we are,” the man said, theatrically snapping open a shirt. “Forgive the wrinkles. It’s been bundled up since the move. With all the repair work needed around here, I’ve not put away all my things. A bit lazy, I’ll admit, but nevermind that.”

Reluctantly, Keith took it from him. “. . .thank you.”

Coran smiled--at Keith, then at Lance, though that was easily managed given how closely they stood together. “You’re welcome. When you’re through changing, Allura asks that you meet her in the den with the others.”

“We’ll be there in a sec.” 

“I’ll let her know.”

And he left again, offering up the privacy of the bathroom for them to have, going as far as to tug the door shut behind him as he went. It. . .was nice, this freely given trust. Acceptance. Coran didn’t care one way or the other whether Lance stood there to watch Keith change shirts or if they held hands.  _ Don’t ever stop hitting back _ , was what he’d said. Allura and her uncle were an odd pair, different as they could be from the stagnant-minded folks that Indigo Pull liked to breed. 

Keith pulled off his bloodied shirt, laid it gently by the sink, and went to throw on the one Coran gave him. Caught up in his head, Lance nearly missed the chance to see Keith’s naked back, the slight bumps of his spine shifting underneath his skin. The dips in his lower back, the natural away the muscles danced and tensed.

Before, he’d only seen what little Keith revealed, the small section of scarring that wrapped around his bicep.

There was no hiding it tonight, not flayed open and exposed like this, his shoulder facing Lance under the high beam of the overhead light: Lance saw the pink s covering Keith’s shoulder in its entirety. 

It traveled low, half-way down Keith’s back, a terror of old, blistered skin. Lines of pale, healthy skin cut in even, measured gaps down the length of it, striping it like the bold lines of a circus tent. The skin at the top held the most color; the lowest, barely visible, petal pink against white. Only Lance’s hyperfocus caught it.

Keith’s arms were over his head, strung in the web of fabric. 

Lance took his only afforded second and laid his hand flat against Keith’s shoulder, touching this new part of him--well, this  _ old _ part. 

Keith froze.

When he glanced up, Lance found Keith watching him in the mirror, expression hard to read, his rioting emotions giving everything away. There was so much born from that one touch--disbelief, worry, a touch of shyness, regret--that Lance understood why he’d never seen the scar before then.

Keith hated it.

And still, he stood there and let Lance roam it with his hands.

The story was clear enough Lance almost saw it play out. Keith, waking up from a nap on the couch, his bed, the floor--the details like that weren’t important. It’s the rise from it, his naked shoulder catching the pure, molten sunlight streaming in from the window. Each thin slip of healthy skin. . .these drew shadows cast by tilted blinds, stripes of places that didn’t burn.

“Lance, don’t,” Keith said. The spell broke. Whatever kept him standing still had fled, and Keith moved again, the shirt flowing over his head. “It’s--”

Lance had the distinct impression Keith was about to tell him ‘it’s ugly’. 

As if any part of him  _ could _ be.

Lance grabbed the hem of the shirt before it hid away the scar again, held it in place above his head. He didn’t think past stepping into Keith again, flush against him. It followed naturally that Lance pressed his lips against the scar, kissing it like he would any other part of him. 

Keith’s soft intake of breath shuddered across Lance’s skin, his arms goosebumps and hair standing on end. So, he kissed it again, each pink mark, from the crown of his shoulder, down to the last faint one, tugging the shirt down as he went.

After, his cheeks ruddy, ears blushed, Lance took a quick step back, the moment broken with the swift hammer-hit of his own nervousness.

“Ah--” Lance both wanted to look up and didn’t. What would he see? Keith was in turmoil again, a tempest of swirling desires, some like fire and some like hooks in his belly. Both good and bad and the gray area in between. “Sorry. That was. . .dumb.” Because he didn’t have a better word for it then.

‘Dumb’ wasn’t right. He knew it. Keith, turning towards him and taking that gentle step forward, knew it.

Lance finally gave in. He looked up. And the liquid violet of Keith’s eyes both burned him to ashes and brought him back to life.

“I didn’t. . .” One blink and the look faded away, the intensity faltering like Keith’s words. Lance breathed a little easier. His hands, Lance noticed, were shaking a little. “Thank you. For earlier. I almost--I didn’t think. I was so  _ mad _ I almost. . .”

The horror sharpened in Lance’s senses. His own stomach clenched tight. Lance pressed a hand against his own navel, brow pinched together.

“I know. I know, but you didn’t so it’s fine. Don’t. . .don’t beat yourself up over it.” Lance dropped his hand. It’d do no good mentioning what Keith already knew. Instead, he caught Keith’s hand in his and found his fingers were cold. “I think Griffin did that enough tonight. You deserve a break.”

Keith’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. Almost. “. . .I guess so.”

“And I  _ know _ so.” Lance winked at him. Keith rolled his eyes. The sinking moment began to lift. “Call it a hunch.”

“For you, that’s  _ cheating _ .”

“Is it cheating if it’s something I do innately? That’s like telling a psychologist they can’t use their brain to study other people’s brains.”

Keith blinked. “. . .you lost me here.”

“That’s why I’m holding your hand.” Lance tugged him forward and Keith stumbled into him, and  _ that _ earned Lance a smile. “Buddy system.”

The huff of Keith’s laughter flipped Lance’s stomach over, pleased him into joining him, his laughter louder and stolen seconds after by a quick kiss pressed over his mouth.

Lance was grinning when Keith leaned away. Keith actually had the nerve to push Lance’s head down, like seeing that wide smile affected him in some way. Which it did. Lance  _ cheated _ and saw right past Keith’s gruff exterior, the way he tried to collect himself and not fall victim to Lance’s silly ways. And, boy, he was failing by the second. Lance really should give the guy a break, too.

It did what he’d wanted anyway: Their joking pushed away Keith’s rising worry, made him forget, if even for a second, that just a little while ago, he nearly lost control of himself in front of everyone.

Keith opened the door.

“Allura wanted to see us,” he said, glancing back at Lance. Amusement danced in his eyes, at the corners of his mouth.

Lance squeezed his hand. “If that’s your way of telling me it’s weird we’ve been standing in the bathroom together way too long, you could’ve just left sooner.”

Keith pulled him out into the hall. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could. Nothing was stopping you.”

Another breathy laugh, two-for-two. “Are you sure about that?”

Sure as he was when he went forward and pressed his mouth to Keith’s shoulder. Maybe it really was a type of cheating. “Okay. Maybe something was holding you back.”

Keith glanced back at him. It was all Lance needed to see to understand what he wanted to say. What passed between them silently in their swinging hands, in their matched steps down the hall. Several, painted eyes followed them but Lance couldn’t focus on the unraveling mystery of Indigo Pull’s largest secret any more than he couldn’t keep his attention forward.

Keith’s jacket weighed his shoulders. The sleeves stopped half-way down his wrists, a little too short for his longer arms. And it was  _ warm _ , the leather heavy and soft and it was no wonder Keith always wore this jacket. Lance hadn’t given himself the chance to think over why he was wearing it now, but as the danger of the evening fell behind them, left in the remains of blood spray wiped clean on rags and shirts, Lance finally allowed himself to enjoy it. In fact, Keith may never get his jacket back now.

Their friends waited on them, stationed around the large room in a potluck of chairs. Some were overstuffed recliners, others ottomans repurposed, and a single, brand new couch made of slippery-soft suede. The kids sat on the floor in front of a TV that had no right being as big as it was, both of their candy buckets emptied on the floor, sorting and trading favorites. Hunk and Pidge sat on the couch, their concern held tightly in their frowns and clenched hands. This eased when Keith and Lance stepped into the room. Pidge rocked up on his feet first. Hunk followed, then Allura, rising from her ottoman like it was a throne.

“Oh, good,” Allura breathed, her hands clasped in front of her. Her relief kissed the air, purely felt. 

The three crowded around them, all of them taking turns looking over Keith’s cleaned face.

“Man, I totally thought we’d have to take you to the hospital.” Hunk actually paled as he said this. “All that blood. . .” 

“It did look rather bad,” Allura admitted softly. “Well, to be fair, it  _ still _ does.”

Pidge looked at Keith’s face, and said nothing.

Keith shrugged. “I kept telling you guys it was fine.”

“Well, forgive us for the concern. I can’t believe James wanted to start something  _ here _ and  _ now _ of all times,” Allura mused. She frowned, thinking. “What even started it?”

Pidge’s stare flicked to Lance immediately. “Keith gave Lance his jacket.”

Lance, under all their burning stares, stood taller, not smaller. “And he was jealous I look so damn good in it,” he joked. “I mean, hello? I think red’s my color. Sets off my eyes.”

He earned a handful of gentle laughs, from Hunk, from Allura. Keith glanced at him, brows lowered, working out if he was serious or not. Pidge knew a bluff when it came and crossed his arms, the stiff fabric of his costume crinkling.

It called Lance’s attention, Pidge’s stance. And what lay beneath, a building unease. 

Lance blurted out, “What’s wrong, Pidge,” and only after realized he asked because of what he felt, not what he saw.

Luckily enough, it didn’t seem too out of place to the others, to Allura, specifically. 

Curling his arms tighter around himself, mouth pressed down, teeth clenched, Pidge didn’t comment. Not at first. Only when Hunk looked over at him, Keith, Allura--all those stares were his undoing, and he sighed, dropping his arms. His face mirrored how he felt on the inside, that worry shining through.

“. . .I--” Pidge stopped. He glanced around at all of them, squaring his shoulders. He forcibly shoved all his fears down deep, so deep Lance barely sensed them past everything else. Anger filled the empty space, directed solely at himself. “I should’ve went to you guys, when the fight happened--but I just--I froze up. I saw Griffin and it’s like. . .that shouldn’t happen. I shouldn’t be  _ that scared _ of him. I’m not! Or I didn’t. . .think I was. Which is stupid! I could have done something! I could have helped! And I just  _ stood there _ !” Pidge threw out his arms, almost hitting Hunk in the process. 

So that’s what it was.

To be fair, not once did Lance question why Pidge stayed at the porch. In fact, he was glad of it. Pidge, until recently, dealt with Griffin’s bullying the most out of them all. And Lance suspected, despite Pidge not bringing it up, it hadn’t stopped entirely over the last few months. Quieted, maybe, in light of Adam’s death, but not over.

Lance asked him as many times as he could before it became evident Pidge wouldn’t say one way or the other.

“Don’t do that,” Lance told him. “Pidge, it’s okay. I get it-- _ we _ get it. And, to be honest? Thank you.”

Pidge jerked his chin up. In his eyes were defiance and confusion, hurt and that same anger. Tonight, their hazel turned golden in the light, bright as the touch of his emotions. “ _ What _ ? Lance, if you’re mocking me--”

“Of course I’m not! Why would I be?”

Hunk glanced between them, his rubber gloves twisted by the fingers. “Guys, I thought you two were over your fighting. Not again. . .”

“Not again,” Lance promised him. “Pidge, hey, I get it. Do you think I don’t feel like that, too? I didn’t do anything.  _ Keith _ was the one that threw the punches.”  _ And caught them _ , but Lance didn’t say that. “But,  _ yes _ . Thank you. For staying with them.”

He pointed over to his niece and nephew laying on the floor, their hands caught up in candy, their attention turned towards the conversation. Pidge followed, saw Nadia and Sylvio look up at him, and some of the anger he carried inside fell away.

“That. . .that was part of it,” Pidge admitted. 

Lance told him, “I know.”

He knew his family was Pidge’s and Hunk’s like Matt was practically another older brother to Lance or Hunk’s grammy was his second  _ abuela _ . Each of them had three separate houses that loved them all deeply. These kids--these annoying, loud, precious kids--loved Pidge as much as Pidge loved them, which was a lot.

Any leftover hurt trickled away, cleaned by the knowledge that no person here blamed Pidge for imaginary crimes. 

The tension eased from his jaw, his shoulders. 

Allura, sensing a turn in the conversation, took it by the reins and steered them away from anything else that might cause an upset. “We might as well take advantage of this. I’ve been trying to clean up a little more before inviting you over, but I guess it’s too late for that.” Humor tickled her voice. “How about we end this night on a good note? We can watch a movie, and I’ll order us some takeout or a pizza or--” Here, her eyes twinkled with mischief. “--maybe both.”

Hunk perked up at that. “Both?”

Allura shrugged, her smile silver and gold and worth every ounce of the playfulness backing it. “What’s stopping us?”

Pidge pointed at her. “You have a point.” He stepped away and jumped over the back of the couch, snatching the remote off the coffee table. “This is a smart TV, right? Do you have Netflix? They just uploaded a  _ bunch _ of horror movies and shows up for Halloween.”

“Man, does it have to be scary? There’s kids here,” Hunk groaned, the argument a weak one. 

Sylvio piped up, “I  _ love _ scary movies.” 

“Of course you do.” Hunk flopped down on the couch beside Pidge, peeling off his gloves. He threw them down on the floor, one towards Sylvio, and one towards Nadia. The kids fell into giggles.

Lance smiled, infected by the emotional shift in the room. “You want to, Keith?”

They hadn’t let go of each others hands. Lance forgot about it until then and only remembered when Keith’s squeezed it in response.

“If you’re staying, I’m staying,” Keith said.

Lance beamed at him.

They sat together in front of the couch, their backs pressed against it, and watched Pidge manically flip through movie options, Hunk’s protests carrying softly over head threaded with Allura’s musical laughter. 

Halloween ended like this: In shared company, passing around pizza and Chinese from boxes and trays, eating their fill of food and jokes and (in Hunk’s case) horror movies. It ended with the kids falling asleep on the floor and Keith dozing off lightly against Lance’s shoulder, Hunk and Pidge leaning against one another, sleepy but awake. It ended with Allura’s small smile and Lance’s wide one, and their shared look in the dark room.

As the credits rolled on the final movie--a feel good one, as Hunk practically insisted--Pidge and Hunk gathered up the kids while Lance shook Keith awake. It was a slow, tired shuffle to the door alone. Lance didn’t even want to think about the walk home.

On the porch, Allura bade them all a goodnight. Lance suspected she’d have let them stay if they asked. The huge house clearly had enough rooms to keep them, but Lance decided it was best he got Nadia and Sylvio home before Luis and Lisa came for them themselves. 

“Thanks for the food,” Hunk told her around a yawn.

“Yeah,” Pidge agreed. “This was fun.”

“It was. We should do it again sometime soon.” Allura waved, her gauzy sleeves lifting and falling, fluid as water. “Be careful, will you?”

Lance grinned. At his side, Keith rubbed at his eyes, the fingers of his other hand hooked in one of Lance’s belt loops. 

“We will,” Lance promised for all of them, and with that, the odd troupe took to the night again, leaving the one place in Indigo Pull Lance never thought he’d step foot through. 

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Pidge was known for being an insomniac. Really, it wasn’t that he  _ couldn’t _ sleep, it was just that he found the days too short otherwise. Why waste 8 hours doing nothing when he could fill it with studying or reading or compiling new data?

He felt the same way about cleaning: Another time waster. He liked the clutter besides, and in its own way, it  _ was _ an organized chaos. No one else understood it--expect Matt--but what did matter if Pidge could find what he needed when he needed it. Which he always did.

Coming home from Allura’s had him feeling inspired. Antsy. Question after question like an itch he needed scratched. He ran up the grand stairway to his room without letting anyone know he was home.

His computer contrast burned his eyes to look at; he didn’t take a second to turn it down.

His fingers flew across the keys, typing his questions into the search bar.

Call it a gut feeling. Call it a guess. Call it looking right into the face of it and not understanding what he saw.

Pidge knew a little about basic medicine. Both his dad and Matt were given training in the military, and both of them were prone to delve into subjects they enjoyed, and, in turn, teach Pidge along the way.

So when Pidge saw Keith’s bruised nose fully, in good lighting, he knew something was wrong.

In no way should it be colored like it was. Greened, like old blood settled beneath the skin. Yellowed in the final stages of healing. 

It was one other thing on a growing list. Keith never showed up unless it was dark, for one. He hadn’t seen him eat, not once, during the entire time he spent here with Shiro. Not tonight either, with all the food Allura provided.

The web page refreshed. Pidge’s results were in.

He sank back against his computer chair, eyes flitting over the lines and lines of text, the information expected though out of place.

But what did Pidge really know anymore?

He had a ghostly voice on a recorder.

And Lance proved his gifts were real, day after day.

It wasn’t like the world was the same as it’d been two months ago. It felt like Adam’s death brought on a bigger change than in just his murder. 

Pidge sat forward again, face propped in his hands.

Psychics were one thing. But vampires? 

Now  _ that _ was something Pidge had trouble believing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank you guys for your comments and continued support! ;O; I kinda wanna go back through and reply to everyone, but some of those comments are MONTHS old. Would that be silly?? It's probably silly. But MAN I'm glad you guys seem to be enjoying it!!


	16. Chapter 16

“Don't tell me you’re nervous about inviting Lance over.” Shiro leaned against the counter when he asked this, in perfect view of witnessing Keith's shoulders tighten in surprise. 

Keith shot him a scathing look with no real heat behind it, and settled down on the couch, paying careful mind to release the tension in his arms, his balled-up hands. His emotions, too, if he could wrangle them in time. Otherwise Lance would read it from halfway down the hall and that. . .Keith drew up his feet, pressing his frown against the tops of his knees. He glanced towards the door. 

He wanted this to go as smoothly as possible.

“I'm not nervous,” he lied. He heard Shiro chuckle from the kitchen. “I'm _ not _.”

“And I'm not saying you are,” Shiro pointed out. He rummaged around, opening drawers, softly sliding them closed again. Silverware jangled. Plates scraped against one another.

Keith’s stomach sank. 

He peered over the couch, feeling all of five-years old again, studying a familiar span Shiro's shoulders working beneath his black shirt. With his back turned, Shiro looked so much like their father that it made Keith's chest hurt. 

Well. 

There went steadying his feelings.

“What’re you doing,” Keith asked. He climbed over the back of the couch, like a cat, bare feet silent on the hardwood floor.

Shiro had been kind when he said the place was ‘small’. 

The apartment was a tiny, squashed unit in a building specializing in selling to fresh-out-of-college young adults or people down on hard times. It was the type of place you could afford thanks to dirt cheap rent bundled with utilities, but paid for twice-over in cramped rooms and narrow hallways. The walls were painted bleach white, the floors a shiny blonde wood grain, fake and peeling apart near high-traffic doorways. Keith's bedroom door didn't shut all the way. The stove had seen better years; the fridge leaked the entire first week until Matt came over and helped Shiro fix it. Two people couldn't walk down the hall at the same time, and the bathroom took up about as much space as a closet. Even the kitchen and living room shared the same space, separated by two quarter-walls of open-backed shelving and the couch, conveniently placed.

And Keith. . .well, Keith loved this place immensely, every flaw or fault. Because it was Shiro's. Because it was _ his _.

Shiro caught his eye. He placed a plate on the countertop and smiled as brightly as the setting sun pouring into the room from a generous, sliding glass door. If his smile had a color, it would match the magenta and tangerine of the sky.

“I figured I might help the two of you along,” Shiro was saying, already turning again. This time he reached for pots and pans, then dug in the sparse ration of their groceries for something specific. “You wouldn't happen to know if Lance likes spaghetti?”

Keith once watched Lance eat an entire plateful of half-frozen pizza rolls without blinking. So he could say, with certainty, Lance would eat anything as long as it didn't give him food poisoning afterward.

“Keith?”

His stomach flipped over again. Quietly, he walked until the faux-wood floor gave way to garish linoleum. “You're not cooking for us,” he said, on the side of disbelieving. 

“Why not? I'm not busy, and I don't mind.” That warm smile again. “I thought you weren't nervous?”

Keith bit his lip. “Okay. If I admit I am _ a little _ will you not be weird and cook us dinner? It's not like this is even a--”

He shut his mouth. He lifted his hands and rubbed the back of his neck while Shiro watched him expectantly. 

“A date,” Shiro supplied. Thankfully, the bargain Keith suggested was enough to halt Shiro's plan halfway. He started putting away everything he'd set out. Keith stepped forward and helped him.

To be fair, Shiro knew about Keith's feelings before Keith even understood them himself. Late night phone calls and weekend visits to Shiro's old city apartment gave Keith ample time to talk about Lance every way he knew how. First, in annoyance at their weird, one-sided feuding. Second, in the quiet, lurching way Keith started not minding how they pushed each others’ buttons on purpose. Third was a little harder to grasp and felt like a secret even to Keith, who was the one feeling it and trying to process it all on his own.

For his part, Shiro listened to everything Keith said, and heard what Keith swallowed down and didn't speak outloud.

And then it suddenly didn't matter.

Keith dropped out of school, made his bad decisions, and stayed as far away as he could before he made anymore terrible choices.

But, somehow, things still lead to this anyway. 

A knock sounded from the door.

Keith’s shoulders bounced up again, and he scowled at Shiro's answering laughter. 

“Do you want to answer the door or do you need a moment to compose yourself,” Shiro asked, chin propped up in his hand. His engagement band caught the light, winking gold, one of the few things of Adam’s that remained out in the open.

Keith waved his hands at him. Shiro was having too much fun with this. “I got it,” he huffed.

Warmth bloomed in his chest, unfurling slowly around the knot of his anxious nerves. Or were they his? It all felt the same, if not a little deeper, his heart kicking up a little faster by the time he pulled open the door.

Lance stood there, wearing his signature jacket and beaming smile. He looked like the wind had pushed him hurriedly through the complex--his hair curled over his ears from beneath a twisted beanie, and his cheeks were flushed the same red as his lips. His hands, Keith noticed, were folded over the strap of his messenger bag.

Seeing him squirmed something deep inside Keith's belly. 

Dumbly, Keith said, “Hey.”

Lance grinned wider, his whole face alight and wind-kissed and focused right at him. Keith swallowed. 

“_ Buenas noches _,” Lance greeted. It sounded like a song, perfectly accented.

Keith became acutely aware of Shiro looking their way, and Lance, who caught it too, leaned partially in the doorway, lifting a hand. They almost-but-not-really touched.

“_ Hola _, Shiro,” he said, and this close, the slight drifting movement brought the smells of fresh laundry and lemons, syrup-sweet.

“_ Hola _, Lance,” came Shiro's reply, not as fine-tuned or musical, yet still just as lively and fun.

Keith stepped back so Lance could step inside, and Lance’s eyes skimmed over the entire, small place. He expected disappointment, pity, a knot to fold between Lance’s thin eyebrows but. . .nothing. Only a radiant smile and that same, tripping feeling in Keith’s chest that he was slowly beginning to realize came from Lance, pushing it out without thinking. It didn’t have a name to him--Lance would know, that was his thing, but it felt the same as opening an unexpected gift and finding something you’ve wanted for a long time tucked inside the wrapping.

At the door, before Keith even had a chance to shut it completely, Lance toed off his shoes, lining them up neatly where Keith and Shiro’s had theirs. 

It was a small thing. Nothing, really, but Keith felt a little easier watching Lance do it.

This was _ Lance _. Lance from a huge family. Lance that helped out with chores around the farm, who took care of his fair share of household duties. Lance who didn’t care how big or small a house was as long as it met all the requirements it needed. And by the sweeping look Lance gave the room, and his lingering smile, Keith knew it did. This wasn’t a rundown shack in the woods or an abandoned house to squat in--this tiny apartment had central heating and a roof that didn’t leak and Keith’s very own bed.

By the time Lance’s gaze fell on him again, the knot of worry started to come undone. As discreetly as he could, Lance grazed his fingers across the back of Keith’s hand to let him know all his worries were for nothing.

Keith sighed and caught his fingers between his. Shiro saw them--but it was _ Shiro _, and he knew about this thing as much as the two of them did. . .as much as Lance’s family knew and all of their friends. There wasn’t any reason to try and hide it, not here, not in his home.

Lance laughed. He pulled Keith forward and flourished grandly with his other hand. “Soooo? Where do we start? I’ve been waiting _ weeks _ for this tour!”

“We’ve only been here two,” Keith argued. Shiro laughed from the kitchen. “What?”

Shiro lifted a shoulder. His smile was enough to read into, the gentle _ I told you so _ carving the dimples out in his cheeks. “Nothing,” he said just in time to beat Lance tugging Keith down the hallway.

As always, Lance's excitement was contagious by design. 

The hallway offered only four doors to peek behind, and Lance took each one as a treat bigger than it was. Keith showed off the pantry-slash-linen closet, the small bathroom, and even a tiny glance into Shiro’s orderly room. Lance tried his best to creep in but Keith pointed to the askance door at the end of the hall, and he watched Lance change gears in a second. Pulled by their locked hands, Lance stopped right in front of the cracked door, the smile on his mouth wide and all white-teeth.

And, yes, Keith stared openly at it, at _ him _, because he could. Because Lance didn’t stop smiling, even when he leaned in, pressing his mouth to Keith’s ear to ask, “Can I come in?” 

The question shivered down Keith’s spine.

He bumped Lance away, mouthed _ You’re stupid _ at him, and pushed open the door.

Inside confessed a secret of barren, same-white walls and ceilings that matched the rest of the apartment. Splashes of color draped over his bed in washes of a fluffy, red comforter and softly wrinkled sheets. A lamp held down a nightstand stolen from Shiro’s other apartment, this one painted with matte-black paint rubbed away in places from use. His family picture sat beside that, turned towards the bed, so Keith could stare at it during the long nights he was awake. Thick curtains, the one and only thing Keith asked for when they moved in, blocked out the window, secured at the top and bottom with an army of push pins.

Otherwise, there was nothing. No art for the walls, no posters or prints. If Lance opened the folding, closet door, he’d find the saddest collection of clothes imaginable, all properly hung and washed and mostly Shiro’s hand-me-downs. But Lance didn’t snoop around, though he looked like he wanted to. Instead, he went to the bed and flopped down. The bag slung across his shoulders fell to the floor. 

Lance reached out, beckoning Keith over.

Keith didn’t need encouragement to follow. He went and stopped the moment their knees touched. “I know it’s not a lot,” Keith started to say.

Lance shook his head. He grabbed Keith’s hands and pulled them. Catching the hint, Keith leaned into him, their faces close. “Is that what all that is,” Lance asked, again in that whispered-hush so Shiro wouldn’t hear. His hand fell over Keith’s heart. “You really think I care how big your house is? Or if your room is jam-packed with stuff?”

Keith looked away, stared at the blank walls. The answer was both a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’. No, because he knew Lance wasn’t like that. Yes, because Lance lived in a big house and frequented the Holt’s large estate. Both were places full of things and memories and people. This little apartment was empty aside from the few things Shiro brought with him from the city. If memories lingered here, they weren’t his own, the scuff marks and cracks in the drywall from the people who lived here before.

“It’s not like that,” Keith said, conscious of the exact moment Lance pushed his hand up, curling his fingers around the juncture of his shoulder and neck. “You know it.”

Lance tilted his chin. “I know you’re a little upset. Well, you were. You seem better now then when I was walking up here.”

He knew it. Keith rolled his lips. “Was it that loud,” he asked, trying to avoid looking at Lance when he asked, which was nearly impossible for many, many reasons.

“Definitely,” Lance joked. The warmth of his hands fell away. Without them to tether him so close, Keith stood a little straighter, eyes cast to the floor. “Hey, no. None of that. I _ like _ your place. Honest. Except you have, like, _ nothing _ on your walls. It’s practically killing the hoarder in me.”

Keith snorted. “_ Lance _.”

Lance grinned. He dug his phone out of his pocket, tapped around on it in what appeared to be mindless abandon, then shot up on his feet. It startled Keith a step back--for all the good it did him, as Lance fell in step with him, drew in, and kissed him square on the mouth.

It was quick, sloppy, and made them both laugh when their teeth knocked together. Keith pushed Lance back by his shoulders, shaking his head, smiling now too. “What’s gotten into you?”

His reply came from Lance slinging an arm around his shoulders and jerking him close again. Their cheeks mashed together, their smiles almost overlapping, and Keith glanced up in time to see Lance snap a picture of them on his phone.

“We had to christen your new bedroom. _ Obviously _,” Lance teased, eyes on the screen. He pulled up the image to show Keith, and was kind enough not to poke fun at the way Keith’s eyes widened. “Not bad, I think.”

_ Not bad _, no, but a little blurry, taken a little too quick. Their faces were squashed in frame, and Keith discovered the smile in the picture still lingered on his mouth now. He swatted Lance away.

“You’re ridiculous,” Keith breathed.

“Yup.” Lance bounced back down on Keith’s bed, unperturbed. Keith saw him grinning even out of the corner of his eye. “That’s why you keep me around, right?”

“Maybe. Probably. Most likely.”

“_ Knew _ it,” said with absolutely fondness. “Wish it had more to do with my amazingly handsome face, but you know what? I’ll settle for ‘ridiculous’.”

“Stop.”

“Never.”

Keith didn’t want him to.

In the weird, mystical way only Lance could read, that decision breached the air. It must have, because Lance glanced up and his wide, cocky smile softened into something more private, more warmth than laughter. Keith watched him set his phone aside and raise his hands--then abruptly drop them again, his ocean eyes snapping to the door. Shiro’s light footsteps sounded down the hallway at almost the same time.

Keith turned when Shiro brushed his knuckles against the door.

“I’m heading out now,” he said, something Keith already knew. To ‘give them space’, as Shiro called it. Keith had argued that he really, _ really _ didn’t need to make a big deal out of it, but Shiro insisted. It sounded like he wanted the two of them to spend time together alone. And to be fair, they rarely got the chance for it, with Lance’s big family or Pidge and Hunk being around. “I’ll be down at the station. If you need anything, call Iverson, alright?”

Lance cocked his head. Keith was the one who answered, “We will.”

Shiro smiled. “And be good. Don’t get into trouble.”

Like they could in this tiny apartment. His implications were clear though, as was the joking way he said it.

Keith loved Shiro, but sometimes his ‘big brother act’ embarrassed him just a little bit.

“We’ll be golden,” Lance promised, and schooled his expression into a severe mask of mock innocence. He fooled no one. It made Shiro laugh and Keith’s lips jump up in a renewed smile. 

“I’m holding you to that, Lance.” Shiro returned the small salute Lance gave him. “I left some money on the counter if you two get hungry later. And I guess that covers it. I’ll see you later tonight. Have fun.”

Keith walked Shiro to the door, speaking in hushed tones that he didn’t need to leave money or to fuss so much, all which fell on deaf ears. It wasn’t until Shiro grabbed him by the shoulder and drew him in for a quick hug that Keith fell quiet.

“I _ want _ to do this for you,” Shiro said. “No one’s forcing me. Have _ fun _, Keith. Really. Even if it’s just goofing off and sharing a pizza or something.”

Keith wanted to argue, to take the money and stuff it back in Shiro’s coat pocket. Didn’t he see that the house was enough? That it was _ too much _ ? Shiro never stopped trying to take care of him, not when they were little, and not now. Keith didn’t need taken care of. He made some sketchy choices, lived in bad places, but he’d made it out just fine. With everything going on, Keith wished Shiro would take the time to take care of _ himself _.

But Keith didn’t know how to say that. Not with words. Not with actions. So he stood there, chewing his teeth, and watched Shiro put on a smile and leave.

The door didn’t make a noise when it latched shut.

Shiro footsteps grew quieter and quieter down the hall.

Lance was louder even on tiptoes sneaking out of the room. He sensed all the things Keith felt, each worry twisting him up into new ‘knots’, as he called them, and when he was close enough, Lance placed his hands where they lived, right over Keith's heart.

“He loves you. It's why he does what he does.” Lance’s voice tickled up the back of his neck. 

Keith shuddered and stepped away, turning around. Lance’s hands grabbed his. “I know.”

“Then why does it make you feel like that,” Lance asked. His fingers slipped in the spaces between Keith’s, fitted to match. They were warm against his cool skin. 

The words _ ‘because I don’t deserve it’ _ flooded into his mouth, weighed his tongue. He tried to catapult them out, spit the bitter truth of it to the floor, and almost did. Seeing Lance’s face stopped him, made him swallow and rethink. Lance squeezed his hands tight enough they hurt.

They stood like that for a few minutes, not saying anything. It read on their faces what they wanted to say, or hung in the air for Lance to study. He knew it better than Keith did or could express, and Lance didn’t force him to answer when the answers wouldn't come.

Lance led him back to Keith's small bedroom by their hands, by his smile, by the littered path of all those unspoken things. They were the only two in the apartment, and still Lance shut the door behind Keith’s back when he stepped inside. A habit from living with so many people, Keith assumed. Exactly opposite of him, who liked to keep the door wide open to catch glimpses of Shiro moving down the hall or the small sounds he made walking around.

“So, Keith, did you have certain _ plans _ you wanted to do? You know, with me. In your room. In your very, _ very _ empty apartment?” Lance's voice was low and playful. He did a thing with his eyebrows, wiggled them suggestively up and down his forehead.

“What makes you say that,” he asked, deadpan. 

Some of Lance’s mischief eased up. “You're serious?”

“Are _ you _?”

“Well. . .yeah? Why wouldn't I be?” Lance dropped Keith's hands, and they came up, cradling the sides of his face. Keith leaned into the touch. “Am I not making it obvious?”

He was. He always was. 

It was easy to spin them around and press Lance back against the door. The hard part was seeing Lance's mouth part automatically, his eyes the same shade of an endless blue sea. It kicked Keith's heart a beat faster, squirmed something in his gut.

Something Lance felt, too.

He slipped his hands down and pressed them to Keith's stomach. “Wait. Hold up. Are we going to talk about this?”

Keith blinked. “What?”

“You know what.”

He really didn't. He was feeling a thousand things at once, most of them things Lance caused when he looked up at him. His confusion read on his face, and Lance took pity on him and finally gave in, sparing him a single, fleeting kiss Keith chased after when it was gone.

“You're hungry.” The accusation startled Keith, pierced him like a well-aimed arrow. 

“I'm not,” Keith lied, easily, convincingly.

Or it would’ve been to anyone other than Lance, who Keith suspected could sense when a lie was told as well as every time Keith's stomach tightened and rolled.

“Yeah, okay. You _ have _ been, since Allura's.”

Since Griffin broke his nose and Keith nearly forgot himself. That part of the night he remembered vaguely, outside of himself, like he watched it instead of lived it. While he had it, the bruise across his nose became the only thing that made it all seem real. That and the echoes of Lance's screams pounding in his head like a second heartbeat: _ Not worth it, not worth it, not worth it. _

His hunger dawned on him sometime later, in the bathroom, with Lance pressed against his legs, the washrag dripping watered blood down his chin. The metal taste haunted his mouth, coppered his tongue. Coran moving unexpectedly between rooms was one of the only things that held him back. 

Keith _ wanted _ it then--he _ needed _ it now.

Lance looked up at him expectantly. Like before, he tilted his head, bearing the smooth, bronze line of his throat.

Keith couldn't deny that he was tempted.

So he stepped away. His hands fell listlessly to his sides. Lance stood up straighter, stung.

“Are we doing this again,” he asked Keith, sounding tired. “Because I'm down to argue about it.”

Keith didn't want that. But he also didn't want to tell Lance what Rachel had been doing either. The things she said--the loosely gathered warnings--they were his own to deal with. A burden made for his shoulders and hands to lift and hold.

Lance scowled suddenly. Fiercely. And even then, with anger darkening his eyes, he was hard to look at, as beautiful as he was.

Keith glanced away, damning himself. Bracingly, he attempted, “It's not a big deal--”

“You know, you can say that about everything a hundred times over and it won't make it any more true.” Lance gathered heat to throw out his words; they burned Keith's ears. “What's wrong? Did something happen? You can tell me.”

Tell him? About that? About Rachel slamming every painful thing _ Lance _ refused to talk about into Keith's head? Lance's fear and hurt raged-- _ alive _ \--inside Keith now, their memories melded as one, the night in the forest fractured into two separate-yet-the-same versions. In one part, Keith was running away; in the other, he was running forward, chasing after his own shadow. He fell and he caught, he screamed and he listened, he felt _ everything _ and then nothing at all.

It wasn't even _ that. _

What he couldn't stomach was what Rachel kept drilling in: _ You could have changed him. _

“Hey--” 

Keith felt the gentle pressure of Lance's hands sweeping through his hair, touching his cheeks, his nose, his jaw. 

“Keith?”

He glanced up.

Whatever anger had been there had left--because Keith no longer felt it either. He was upset and worried, so Lance was worried and upset. They were mirrored, wearing the other's expression, feeling the same trips and turmoil in their hearts.

Nothing good would come from keeping secrets. 

Keith sighed and took Lance's hands.

The confession came easier than he thought it would. Once started, the words poured out of him, like a cup knocked over. Keith told Lance the conversation he had with Rachel on the porch, abridged her warnings to trim the fat of their gruesome clarity, glossed over just how much of Lance’s memories he knew. And all the while, Lance stood there, leaned back against the crooked door, eyes far away.

“. . .why didn't you say anything before,” Lance asked when Keith finished, the question running over the last few words Keith managed to say.

“Because I know why she did it. We made a stupid mistake.” Lance’s jaw tightened at that; Keith plowed on. “What? Rachel’s _ right _\--I could’ve--that--” A growl swallowed up the rest of what he wanted to say. It wouldn’t come out right anyway.

Keith spun and paced the room, his hands scouring his face. Lance remained at the door, watching the spectacle.

“A mistake,” Lance parroted. He wasn’t happy. When Keith looked over at him, Lance had his arms folded and his mouth drawn in a frown. “That’s what you think of it?”

Again, it was a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’.

Keith pushed his hair away from his eyes and tried to say what he needed to say. “No--yes--but only because I could’ve done _ this _ \--” He gestured to himself in a quick, sweeping movement. “--to _ you _ . Do you know what that would’ve--I would’ve. . .I can’t do _ this to you _ . I don’t want this for you, Lance. And I didn’t even think about it. I don’t even know how I turned! That’s what Rachel said, and she’s _ right _. You can’t tell me she wasn’t right about that.”

But, as it turns out, Lance could.

Pushing away from the door, Lance walked right over to him in two, long strides. For a single, heart-lurching second, Keith swore Lance was about to kiss him--but then Lance’s hand smacked against his chest instead.

“If this was going to be a problem,” he said, and Lance pointed to Keith’s mouth then stabbed the same finger over Keith’s heart, “it would’ve already been a problem. And, also? V would’ve said something before now. She can _ see the future _, Keith.”

The McClain’s gifts were as much as mystery as Keith’s vampirism. They didn’t know why they were the way they were anymore than Keith knew about himself, but they spent time _ trying _to understand. The family nurtured their own magic, encouraged the growth in each other, and figured things--the good or the bad--out when they happened. Lance was the best example of this--he grew into his powers later than usual, and as a result, his Empathy grew stronger by the day, changed and developed rapidly, as if to make up for lost time.

Keith had been this way for over a year, and in that year, he learned a handful of Rules to remember:

  * Animal blood kept him well-enough alive; human blood, as it turned out, gave him that ‘super awesome healing’, as Lance called it. It made him feel better, too. Almost. . .almost like he was normal.
  * Silver irritated his skin. The longer the exposure, the worse it became, building from a slight discomfort to actually burning.
  * Sunlight was a hard pass, and he had scars to testify. Scars Lance had seen and touched. Sometimes, his shoulder ached, searing over with a phantom pain of catching fire. _I don’t turn to dust_, he’d said, but it might hurt less if he had.
  * Movies always preached churches and crosses and Bibles could scare a vampire away. It turned out that only applied if they believed in God in the first place. The Bible was just a book; a church was just a lonely house; and Holy Water was just water, softly blessed.
  * Entering houses was a whole, barely understood thing in itself. He needed permission to enter the Holt’s or the McClain’s only once, and he suspected he could go back to Lion Castle and go inside without issue. But he didn’t need anyone to say he could come into the apartment--he simply walked in. Probably because it was his? Or that he had a key? He wasn’t sure.

Keith went to his bed and sat down.

He knew very little, about himself and about Lance, about the gifts Lance's sisters had and how they could use them. Rachel demonstrated hers well enough, the specific way she grew into them. Veronica, on the other hand, was a bigger mystery. She was always nice to him, before and after the storm. Everyone in Lance’s family, actually, _ except _ for Rachel.

The mattress dipped beside him, sagging gently from Lance’s weight.

“I didn’t think of that,” Keith admitted, folding his hands over his knees. 

Lance lifted his shoulders. “It’s okay. All of it. Except Rachel doing that whole mind-thing.” His face twisted a bit, at the brow and mouth, a gentle look of betrayal. “I’m gonna talk with her.”

Keith assumed as much. “Don’t,” he tried. “What did you say about Shiro? ‘He loves you, it’s why he does what he does’? Because I get that. I get that’s why Rachel tried to keep me away.” Impulsively, Keith grabbed Lance’s hand. Half-expecting Lance to draw it back, it pleased him more than usual when Lance curled their fingers together. “Not to be mean. Because she loves you a lot, and I could’ve screwed everything up.”

Their shoulders knocked together, Lance drifting over, an extra excuse to touch. “You didn’t screw anything up, Keith.”

That was a big, fat lie. Appreciated, sure, but a lie nonetheless.

“If you say so.”

“I _ do _ say so, thanks for listening. Now, hey? I think that door is awfully gorgeous too, but you have a few better options to look at, you know.”

Humor tickled laughter up his throat. Keith glanced over at Lance and found him smiling, his blue eyes dancing. “Ha ha,” he said, only to actually laugh when Lance made a face. “Stop that.”

“I already answered that. I said ‘never’ and you went all warm inside, soooo sorry, you’re stuck with this.”

Keith pushed him away. “I did not.”

“Uh, yeah you did! It started right here--” Lance pressed his hands against Keith’s chest. “--and then it went--” He mapped out everything, from the base of Keith’s throat to his stomach. “--all through here.” 

Lance’s hands stilled. Drew away. Found new places to touch. He caught Keith by the chin and turned his head gently, and they both leaned in at the same time, pressing their foreheads together.

“Yeah,” Lance breathed. Keith watched him close his eyes. “It felt kinda like that.”

With a smile in his voice, on his lips, Keith whispered, “You’re ridiculous,” and kissed him.

Everything fell away when Lance pressed against him, their mouth shifting and moving, their little sighs and noises bubbling past their lips. Lance slipped his hands back through Keith’s hair, held it away from their faces, his fingertips gently dragging along his scalp. Keith had his curled around Lance’s hips, fingers tangled up in the belt loops of his jeans. 

There wasn’t anything else except this. No worry, no fear, no ‘could have been’s or ‘almost’s. Just Lance’s hands on him and Keith’s mouth against his and the slow disappearing distance between.

If he went ‘all warm inside’ before, Keith wondered what Lance sensed now.

Because Keith felt like he was burning.

Using the grip on his hips, Keith rolled the two of them back on the mattress, Lance pinned under his hands and the sinking weight of his thighs. The kiss broke and reformed, eager, open-mouthed. Lance’s long legs shifted, twitched up; Keith moved to balance on his knees, hands sliding underneath the several layers Lance wore. His jacket and shirt rode up, exposing the toned plane of his stomach, softly quivering under all the attention.

Lance touched him back, hooked his fingers in Keith’s shirt and _ yanked _. He got the hint, and quickly sat back, shrugging out of it. It hit the ground first, Lance’s jacket trailing after it like a lost star, then his shirt too. They made a mess on the floor, a pile of wrinkled sheets and intentions.

Gasping, Lance grabbed Keith impatiently by the back of the neck and coaxed him down, dropping soft, encouraging kisses over his cheeks and mouth. The sounds he made, each soft breath, sank in the same liquid yearning spooled between them.

Keith couldn’t think. Not with Lance’s mouth snagging each thought before it came, not with his hands racking through his hair, down his back, pulling him closer and closer until they couldn’t fit together any tighter. He traced his hands over Lance’s arms, a cartographer finding each new peak of muscle or plain of smooth skin, mapping them again when goosebumps rose to meet his fingers. He listened to the song of Lance swearing under his breath, sometimes in English but mostly in Spanish. When Lance shifted again, their hips dragging together, Keith understood exactly what he was saying then.

The small movement shot a thrill up his back. Keith’s hands clutched Lance’s arm, knotted in the sheets, bruised and twisted and grasped.

Keith’s head swam. His heart punched and raged. Everything glowed under the lamplight--Lance’s hair gilded, his skin turned honey-gold, the look in his eyes pure, molten sapphire.

He’d never seen anyone more beautiful in his entire life.

Lance paused. Keith canted toward him, rocking forward specifically, on purpose, in a way that made them both moan. He kissed the sound right out of Lance’s mouth, caught it between his teeth and lips. The warmth of being stretched together seared across his skin--Keith felt every place they touched.

Lance’s hands fell to his shoulders; his fingers shook. “_ Keith _\--”

The word fell to Keith’s mouth, and he took that too, turned his head and let it flood over his tongue.

Distantly, Lance made another low noise.

It tasted like copper and salt.

Lance pushed him back, drew away with a ragged gasp that clawed straight down into the pit of Keith’s belly. Lance’s eyes were half-lidded, mouth slack--and a ruby bead rolled down his chin, falling to the sharp line of his collarbone.

Keith sucked in a breath.

Lance’s hands held him still. “Stop, it’s okay--it’s okay.” He coasted his fingers up Keith’s throat, shaking his head. Keith watched Lance run his tongue over the slit in his lower lip. “I think it’s my fault. I moved my head too quick. Your fangs are out.”

He didn’t even notice. But--_ oh _. The brightened colors, the glow of Lance’s bronze skin. He should’ve known.

“I’m sorry,” Keith choked out. He couldn’t stop looking at the line of blood painted down Lance’s chin. At the crimson dot at the base of his throat.

Lance teased the tip of his tongue over his lip again, eyes lifted expectantly. “Hey, no, it's okay. Fine. Way fine," he said. 

Keith broke.

Impulse drove him forward, made him kiss the spot at Lance throat. He ran his tongue up Lance’s chin and by the time he made it to Lance’s mouth, his lips were parted for the kiss that came.

Like last time, in the shack, something drove Keith to rub his tongue against the cut he made, and when he pulled away, the slit in Lance’s lip sealed shut. He was almost sad it did.

Lance reached up, prodding against the tender skin. Keith watched that too, and he shifted back, covered his eyes with a trembling hand and realized he was shaking.

“Hey,” came Lance’s soft voice as he pushed up from the bed, his hands delicately peeling Keith’s hands back. “Look at me.”

He didn’t want to. Not like this. But Lance asked him, and asked him _ like that _, all tender and nearly pleading, and Keith couldn’t deny him anything.

Keith dropped his hands and looked.

Lance looked back at him, dazzling and dazzled. He breathed, “_ Goddamn _.”

“What?”

Lance’s fingers swept over his cheeks, and his eyes stared at him, _ all _ of him, consuming every inch they fell on. “Everytime I see you like this, I can’t believe it.”

Keith started to lean away.

“No, wait, I mean. . .have you ever seen yourself? Like this?” Lance asked and Keith shook his head. Quickly, Lance groped for his phone, which turned up half-buried in the comforter. Like before, he took a picture before Keith realized what he was doing, and after, stared his fill at it before turning the phone around. “Look.”

Who was on the screen wasn’t him.

It was a boy with knotted black hair and pale skin and eyes like purple diamond. His cheeks were flushed, his mouth swollen and parted, two sharp teeth hooking over his lower lip. Keith saw all his wants reflected back at him in each new splinter of violet in his eyes, saw them as he felt them--vividly, wild with longing.

He didn’t know what Lance saw in it--in _ him _\--why he made sure to show it, like this, in the middle of everything.

What did Lance expect him to see?

Because what Keith saw was something that would inevitably hurt him. It was only a matter of how and when.

As before, Keith tried to lean away, suddenly self-conscious and sick with worry.

The phone droppes from Lance’s fingers. It hit his stomach and slipped to the bed again; the screen dimmed and darkened. Gentle hands cupped over Keith’s ears, long fingers twining into his hair, but it was Lance’s intense look that stopped Keith from climbing away.

“You’re beautiful.” 

Keith jerked, stung by his own surprise. He blinked dumbly at Lance, sure he misheard. “What?”

Lance said it just as steadily the second time, “You’re _ beautiful _.”

“I’m--”

“--literally the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen? Yeah, hello, are you listening to me?” Lance searched his face; Keith lowered his eyes. “. . .you think I’m lying?”

He didn’t have to say so. His shoulders tensed and his mouth fell. Lance’s hands dropped to his shoulders.

“I’m not lying, Keith.”

Keith wouldn’t look at him.

Lance dug his fingers into his skin. “I’m not.” He was quiet for a second, then told him, “You’re not this big, bad thing you keep convincing yourself you are.” He rapped his knuckles against Keith’s forehead when he said it, a closed door he wanted to open. “Do you want to know what I see, when I look at you?”

He fell into the trap of Lance’s ways with that single question. Keith glanced up, finally, and Lance’s soft smile soothed him to see. “I saw it. You took a picture.”

“I took a picture,” he agreed. “But that’s only one, little moment. It’s not all I see. It can’t be. You’re not the same now as you were when I took this.” He showed the picture on his phone again, to make his point. “Like, your eyes have changed already. They’re paler now, but still doing that thing they do when you’re like this.”  
Keith didn’t understand what Lance was trying to go with this. “. . .okay?”

“You do the same thing _ in here _ . Change like that. All the time.” His hand pressed over Keith’s heart, trapped each thudding beat in his palm. “You aren’t a single moment, Keith. You’re not the same person you were a year ago, or two years ago. You won’t be the same two years _ from _ now. That’s what I’m trying to say. You focus on one part of you and think that’s all you are. A vampire. Sure, but you’re also the guy Pidge invites over to his family summer barbecues every year. You’re still Shiro’s little brother. You’re. . .you’re still the guy I tried so hard to impress in school. The guy I’m _ still _ trying to impress, I guess, if I’m being honest.

“That’s what I see when I look at you, when you’re like this or not like this. I see who you were and are and could be, and no where in there is this. . ._ monster _ you think you are.”

Lance lowered his hands, found Keith’s where he’d fisted them against his jeans, and folded their fingers together. It was just a touch, but whether Lance realized it or not, it also changed between one second and the next. Keith felt it tingle up his arms, to his elbows and his shoulders; it trickled over his chest, deeper down, right into his heart. His body became consumed by it, shivering, hot and cold and swallowed up in Lance’s attention.

Keith closed his eyes and heard Lance whisper, “You’re everything.”

_ Everything _.

Keith swallowed, and when he opened his eyes again, he found Lance looking at him, wearing the same smile he’d been falling for since the first time he’d seen it, all those years ago.

He let go of his hands. The pins-and-needles didn’t stop. Keith didn’t think it ever would.

Keith wasn’t good with words. He didn’t know how to articulate what he was feeling or put it together in a way that made sense. Lance did it without thinking, like when he let his magic pour into Keith and heal all the doubt he held inside. 

_ Doing _ made more sense than talking. Using his hands, throwing his fists, kicking or digging in his feet. Or, like now, when Keith drew in and kissed Lance, telling him everything he could through it and the way his heart tightened and lurched and punched hard against his chest. Whether it was what Lance said or what he did when they held hands, Keith didn’t worry if Lance would understand.

He knew he would.

_ You’re everything _, Lance had said.

And Lance was everything to him. He was soft morning light and the smell of sunshine, the warmth of an afternoon hot against his skin, the enchantment of dusk painting the sky in fire. He was a night sky so full of stars it could light the world in a second day.

And he was right here, on his bed, his hands on him and his mouth opening, tongue seeking and careful. 

In dizzying certainty, Keith felt how Lance’s heart filled and ran over, how his stomach fluttered and flipped, and every part of him flushed warm. So that’s what Lance meant, this is what it felt like.

Keith curled his arms around him. Lance hooked his around his shoulders. And they fell against the bed again like that, in a tangle of limbs and twisted bedsheets, a knot of shared, understood feelings burning like a fire between them both.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The second time didn’t hurt as much as the first, and the first hadn’t hurt at all.

Lance perched on the edge of the mattress, wrist turned towards the lamplight. A new, glorious bruise cuffed his wrists in inkwell blues and violets. He didn’t have to argue or insist--Keith asked and Lance said ‘yes’ and it was as easy as Keith sinking his fangs into his skin. To Lance, it felt just as good too, but that was a secret he tried to keep from his smile.

Really, it wasn’t hard to hide. Keith had been surprised when he’d pulled his bag onto the bed after, fishing out the small stash of snacks Lance thought to bring over. Jerky, protein bars, things with added iron and vitamins to combat the vertigo of being bitten. Lance had been amused since, and Keith, too, reading it in the air.

Something had happened between them that left them like open books. Lance couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment the shift happened, just the second Keith felt it and all his worries came undone, one by one, like all the knots inside him bounced free.

There’d been a lot to read, exposed like that, a lot of feelings came to the surface. Lance smoothed his senses over them, named them, and each became more precious than the last. That was the other secret he hid in his amusement--those named emotions were hard to ignore now that they weren’t hidden.

Keith turned and looked at him. He lowered his eyebrows, attempting to scowl. It didn’t come off as clean-cut as he wanted, and he gave up when Lance kept smiling. “What?”

Lance shrugged up a shoulder. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t say you did. You were looking at me.” He stood up and passed Lance his shirt and jacket.

Lance ignored him and rocked forward, snagging Keith’s shirt off the floor with the tips of his fingers. Before Keith could argue, Lance tugged it on. “Is it suddenly bothering you that I’m looking at you?”

“What? No.” Keith stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“What? This?” Lance plucked coyly at the front of Keith’s shirt. “I’m wearing it.”

“Why?”

“Like you haven’t borrowed my clothes before. I’m calling it--it’s my turn.” Plus, it smelled like Keith had lived in it for two days straight. Bonus. “Don’t give me that look. You can wear my shirt, if you want.”

Keith considered it. He draped Lance’s jacket on the bed and snapped Lance’s shirt open. Then, with a shrug, he pulled it on. It was only a little tight across his shoulders. “I think I’ll stretch it.”

“Good,” Lance said, ignoring the way Keith glanced over at him. “I’m used to Luis stealing my shirts on laundry day, dude, and he’s bulkier than you are. My shirts never survive. You’re fine.”

“That’s what you keep telling me,” Keith murmured, sitting down next to him.

Lance grinned, a laugh shaking his shoulders. “Oh! _ Now _ you have jokes!”

Really, the whole night had been good to them. Keith acted and felt better now, and the weight of his hunger lifted off of Lance too. This time, Keith watched the way his skin knit back together, and the sudden way the bruising appeared in between blinks. They were stretched out together on the bed, flushed and sticky with sweat from sharing the same, hot space for so long. Not that Lance minded much. Keith didn’t seem to notice. For several long, quiet minutes, Keith held his wrist and touched the bruise he’d made, his wonder as bright and glittering as gold.

Keith reached and Lance automatically grabbed his hand halfway over. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Only asked for the seventh time. Lance assured him, “Fine, but I’m beginning to worry about you. You’re telling jokes! Something bad must’ve happened.”

If possible, his smile softened and sugared into something sweeter. Lance’s heart ached and filled and tripped all at once. “You’d know if that was true.”

Caught. Lance shrugged again. “You got me there.”

The hour had gotten late, way later than Lance realized. He’d promised his mom he’d be home later than night, but the exact time he said had already past. Quickly, he text her to let her know that he was fine and would be home later than expected, and made a new promise to text her when he left Keith’s. While he had his phone out, Lance shot responses to Hunk’s and Pidge’s texts, in both their private messages and in the group one that’d been overrun with memes and reaction images to something Pidge was talking about.

Keith’s chin pressed against the top of Lance’s shoulder, and he idly watched Lance do all this. The conversations were bland--as if they could be, between the three of them--and Lance didn’t care if Keith read over his shoulder anyway. The intimacy of how they were sitting made him giddy.

Lance glanced over. “Wanna check my Twitter feed with me, too,” he asked, already pulling it up.

Keith’s violet--just violet, deep and dark--eyes flicked up then back down to the screen. “. . .I miss having a phone,” he admitted, softly, against Lance’s shoulder. 

Between the phone and Keith’s hand, Lance didn’t have another to spare. He turned his head a bit instead, touching his cheek to the top of his hair to comfort him. “I wish you did, too,” Lance told him, scrolling through the pictures and blurbs of text at a pace they could both read. “I have so many vampire memes I want to send you it isn’t even funny.”

“You know what? I just decided I’m good. Forget I said anything.”

“Too late. Your secret’s out in the open. And since you’re here, I can show you all these damn screenshots. They’re eating up my storage space.” 

“. . .Just. . .just how many did you save?”

Lance chuckled. “I’m being dramatic. It’s only like twenty.”

“. . .you’re joking.”

“Sadly. It’s more like forty but I didn’t want it to seem like I went down a rabbit hole of finding text posts and reaction images to save for you but, you know, if the truth wants to come out, I gotta let it come out.”

Keith muttered something that sounded exactly like ‘You’re dumb' and Lance grinned. 

After a while, Lance passed his phone to Keith so he could poke around on it. He checked on an e-mail account that collected the dust of nearly six thousand unopened messages, all mostly spam and a few, searched ones from an address that Keith told him was Shiro’s. “I guess he was hoping I’d go to the library or something and check it,” Keith wondered out loud, reading them even though the paragraphs inside were expired concerns and questions for his safety.

Lance skimmed them with him, and the growing worry between each one was hard to stomach. Shiro had been trying to reach out the entire year, in the small ways he was able. It wasn’t any surprise that he felt a lot calmer now when they shared an apartment together. Lance could only imagine the sleepless nights Shiro had, wondering just where Keith was and if he was still alive.

He squeezed Keith’s hand.

Keith hummed at him, but didn’t lift his head, his eyes still focused on the screen.

Lance didn’t say anything, and let him have this time to do what he wanted. The pain wasn’t his to comment on anyway. It was Shiro’s. And Lance was sure Shiro had told him about it already.

There wasn’t much Keith wanted to do on his phone after all, except pointedly go into Lance’s pictures and thumb through them. He deleted the one Lance took earlier, which hurt. “I’m sorry,” Keith said, but he didn’t need to be. It was a dangerous thing to have anyway, and Lance knew it.

But he wished he could’ve kept it for personal reasons.

When he was through, Keith passed Lance back his phone. It found its way into Lance’s pant pocket. Otherwise, they didn’t move, something they were both happy about.

“Are you going to keep the window cracked for me,” Lance joked.

He heard the smile in Keith’s voice. “Are you going to climb up here in the middle of the night?” 

“Are you saying I can’t?”

“No, I’m saying I don’t want you to fall.” The honesty hit Lance like a gentle fist. “I don’t have an air conditioner you can jump up from.”

That’s a fair point. “Alright. But for, like, the aesthetic then?”

“Are you trying to romantice keeping a window open for each other? Is that what this is?”

Lance didn’t say anything other than, “Maybe.”

Keith sighed. Not in an irritated way--Lance would’ve caught that in a second. It was all pleasure and softness, a precursor of seeing the look of it in Keith’s eyes. He got up, went to the window and eased it up an inch or two. A breath of cool, November air slipped in, peppered with the late-night music of Indigo Pull: Car engines groaning, windchimes singing, owls and nocturnal songbirds hooting and whistling their secret language.

Keith turned and faced him. He folded his arms, Lance’s shirt agonizingly taunt across his biceps. “Happy?”

Lance flopped back against the bed, looking at him upside down, his heart racing. “Could be better, actually.”

“Let me guess.” Keith stepped over. His hands fell to the ruffled comforter on either side of Lance’s head, and smiled above him. “You want me to kiss you.”

His stomach did a perfect somersault. “How’s that guessing? I _ always _ want you to kiss me.”

If Keith kept looking at him like _ that _, Lance would explode. He could feel the seams starting to come undone, every small thread holding him together beginning to unravel. They might’ve just spent the better part of two hours rolling around on the bed, kissing and talking and grabbing onto one another, but that, by no means, meant Lance wouldn’t be more than happy to do it all over again.

Keith laughed. From his angle on the bed, Lance watched it travel all the way up his throat and slip past his lips. It made him smile, too, pulled his hands up, fingers tracing the insides of Keith’s arms.

“Well,” Lance prompted, waiting.

“I think it’s funny,” Keith mused. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

Lance flushed, from ears to cheeks to deep inside, the warmth burrowing in his chest and belly and settling low. “Then kiss me, stupid, because I’m dying.”

Keith smiled.

And he sank down to do as they both wanted, his lips grazing over Lance’s in the first of many that would follow.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Three days later, Keith came home from a walk to find a small bundle of things waiting on his bed: A couple of brand-new posters, some art prints, and a single, thick manilla folder. Inside were doodles from Pidge, a sheet of motivational calligraphy from Hunk, and some vintage metal signs Allura found while cleaning. Each thing had a note with it, a quick mention of why his friends included what they did, and hope that he’d like them.

Which was to say, he loved them.

The posters were from Shiro, the prints something he saved from Keith’s old room, as were a small tin of thumb tacks Keith found on his bedside table to hang everything up.

Keith spent over forty minutes hanging everything specifically, and he had to admit, once his walls were filled, the room looked better and lived in and like home.

Shiro found him the next morning before he left for the station, and passed Keith another package. At first, Keith thought he made a mistake and forgot to include it with the rest, but Shiro smiled and told him, “Lance told me to give this to you in person.”

It was wrapped up in Christmas paper, a red check-print that matched his favorite flannel. Keith couldn’t keep the smile off his lips if he tried.

“Why? You could’ve just sat it on the bed with everything else,” he pointed out.  
Shiro raised his shoulders, heading into the kitchen to start his morning coffee. “Just doing as he asked. He made it sound really important.”

Keith wandered back into his room and opened it.

It set him in the mind of the night they skipped river stones until midnight, because the gift turned out to be another framed picture. And, like before, the photo behind the frame gave him a start, as unexpected as it was.

His and Lance's faces were smushed together, both of them smiling wide, their eyes dancing and bright. The picture Lance took when he came over. The one that made Keith call him ‘ridiculous’ because he was then and he was now.

A note was taped to the back, and this one said, each word carefully, lovingly curled in Lance’s handwriting:

_ Just a reminder. _

_ \-- L _

And, a little lower, added either hastily or before Lance lost the courage to do it:

_ You’re everything_.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, just to date this. . .I wrote this chapter the immediate morning after I watched the train wreck of the final season of Voltron. OOF. As you can tell, I took matters into my own hands DAMNIT!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the ones with some intense panic in it! Just as a soft forewarning!

The McClain's loved any day or holiday they could turn into an excuse to prepare big, abundant meals and gather. Halloween or birthdays. Easter Sunday. Thanksgiving and Christmas. As November drew to a flurry-filled end, the energy in the McClain household grew, warmed, and Maria McClain fell into her traditions like a dance she knew every step to.

Much like during Halloween, each of the children had their own parts in helping out. Rachel baked pies according to ‘secret’ family recipes. Marco arranged the kitchen table to cut longways through the dining room and partially into the living room, and Luis found all the chairs they'd need. Lance counted them as he walked past. There was one extra, like always, for Keith. 

Lance's duties involved setting out the numerous platters and plates heavy with his mom's and  _ abuela's _ food. A casserole dish packed tight with plantain stuffing, fragrant with bacon and onions. Pots of macaroni and cheese, plenty extra for the kids’ second and third helpings. His mom made the best mashed potatoes, fluffed with fresh cream and butter and peppered with garden-grown chives, and Lance continued to sneak bites between each dish he brought to the table until his  _ abuela _ found him out. There were plenty of desserts too, lined on the counter. Rachel's cinnamon apple crumble, two cherry pies, and a pecan pie for the kids. His dad's annual rum cake steeped in its pan, getting drunker by the minute. Thumbprint cookies were piled precariously high on a dinner plate.

The house smelled like turkey and gravy and spice. Lance woke up to it; he'd fall asleep to it too. 

This would be one of the first years Hunk and Pidge would miss out. Usually, they jumped between their three houses, eating just as many meals and feeling absolutely miserable by the end of the day. Hunk's family always served Thanksgiving lunch, the Holt's an early supper. The McClain's favored a dinner that reached long into the night, the food and drinks and music continuing until well after all the kids and Lance fell asleep. Once or twice, Lance walked in the following Friday morning to find his mom and dad still awake, nursing cups of black coffee spiked with the heady scent of clove. 

But this year Hunk's Pappy felt well enough to travel and came down for a special visit Hunk didn't want to miss. Lance already promised to save a slice of pie for him and a baggy full of cookies, and Hunk said he'd pay him back with a generous portion of his brown butter pound cake. More than a fair exchange. 

Pidge left for his maternal grandparents two days ago and wouldn't be back until school started up. Hunk and Lance spammed him by the hour, sharing pictures of food and ‘I miss you's Pidge replied to in kind. 

Pidge liked his grandparents fine, but they could never wrap their heads around his preferred name, though they tried their best.

The table setting looked empty without their two chairs. The house, a little less full.

Keith planned to come over sometime after dark. Lance spent most of the week haunting various weather sites, hoping for clouds or rain or snow. He knew his luck ran dry when sunshine woke him up that morning, bright and early, broadcasting a day so clear it was actually insulting.

Now he had to wait. Wait until dusk or if, by chance, a wayward rain shower decided to roll in. Which looked about as likely as Lance sneaking off with a stolen piece of pie, so he cut his losses early and hiked upstairs.

The McClain children were thick as thieves and shared pretty much everything--clothes and beds and hearts--so when Lance walked into the bathroom a few minutes later, Veronica barely glanced up from the tub. 

“Hey, can I bother you a second?” Lance closed the door behind him, the privacy it granted about as sure as her answer.

“You already are,” she pointed out. She drew a leg up and carefully followed its curves with her razor. 

Lance lifted himself up on the counter, swinging his feet. “Okay, cool, because I have a question.”

“Questions, you mean,” she said in that knowing way of hers. Lance sensed her picking fun at him.

“Yeah, sure, questions. I don't even know if you can answer them. And you. . .you gotta promise not to tell mom. Or dad. Or anyone really.”

Veronica considered this as she rinsed her razor off in the bubbly water. “But I can speak to Rachel about it?”

The question surprised him. Lance wasn't sure why. “Oh. Well. Yeah, actually. Do you already. . .?”

“I know it's about Keith,” V told him, clearing any doubt. “And if it's about Keith, I can take a guess. Help me figure out when we are. Is there a bruise on your wrist?” 

Lance hesitated before he held out his arm, pushing up the sleeve of his sweater. Veronica stared at it, her emotions hard to read, both on her face and deep inside. She wasn't shocked, though. Why would she be? 

There was. . .worry, though. A faint touch of fear. 

Lance's stomach clenched tight.

_ Oh no _ .

Lance rocked forward. “What? Is it bad? Did I mess up? Did  _ we _ mess up? Am I going to turn into a vampire too?”

Veronica’s even voice assured him, “No. No, don't worry about it, it's not that. Sorry. I think something else is going to happen today.”

“What's that mean? ‘You think’?” 

During the last few months, Lance became intimate with the way Rachel's mind reading worked. Veronica, on the other hand, though always supportive, never really talked about her gift. Rachel always said it was because seeing the future was hard to understand, and hinted that Veronica didn't even know the full scope of what she could do. 

Each one of them had their own little nuances. Rachel implanted thoughts as well as read them. Their  _ mamá _ pressed her healing into her food. Lance's Empathy changed and grew faster than he could keep up with. Veronica was sure to have her own little quirks too, whatever they may be. Lance never thought to ask. V never spoke about it. But now, as he sat there, Lance curiosity spiked.

“. . .we don't realize how often we repeat the same things,” Veronica explained. “Like, for instance, though this is the first time you've come to talk about Keith, I've dreamt of it four separate times. Twice involved situations like this. You sitting on the counter, me in the tub, and because they're so close, they blur together. Something is supposed to happen one of those times. Something I never fully dreamed.”

Lance always thought Veronica's dreams were concrete. Solid. A paint-by-number already filled in. Rachel had been right--it  _ did _ sound complicated.

Unconsciously, Lance rubbed at his wrist. The bruise didn't hurt, not exactly; touching it sent shivers up his arm. “Oh. Okay. I guess. . .?”

He didn't know what to say.

Veronica switched legs. The perfumed bubbles around her swirled and rocked up her naked back. “It's alright.”

“You felt scared, though.”

“Think about my dreams as  _ dreams _ , Lance. All the rules apply. It's rare to have a full dream, everything played from start to finish. Some mornings I only get impressions. Good feelings. Or bad,” Veronica admitted. “But, nevermind that. What was your question?”

She glanced over at him. Her eyes always made him think of silvered clouds, the promise of rain or snow. They were the same as their father’s, Lance had their mother’s blue.

He crossed his ankles while he thought. “. . .I guess you already answered it. Because I've been worried about this--” Lance held up his arm, tapping lightly at the bruise. “I didn't think about what could happen. Does it? Do you know? I don't. . .do I?”

Veronica leaned back. The water made waves, splashed up the sides of the tub. The whole, humid room smelled of oats and honey and Veronica's floral shampoo. 

“No. It won't. I don't know why, but I've not seen you not yourself. You're fine.”

Lance breathed a little easier. He unhooked his ankles, hands falling to the countertop, braced to push off to the floor.

But he hesitated. And in that hesitation, a new question came out, one he didn't mean to ask, “Are you mad about it too? Like Rachel is?”

Veronica stopped what she was doing. The razor found the lip of the tub, and her hands disappeared beneath the scum of suds. “Is that what you feel,” she asked, avoiding the question. Or reminding Lance that he knew these sorts of things innately, by just a glance.

Lance frowned. He thought about it, then took it one step further by thumbing through V's emotions. They read like a deck of cards, a pile he shuffled between his hands, all the numbers and suits face-up and easy to read.

He didn't find the same frustrations Rachel harbored. No betrayal. Not a single spark of anger. What he saw were a matching pair of love and trust, and a royal flush of knowing the thing Lance and Keith shared was something precious.

Quietly, Lance said, “No. It’s the opposite.”

Veronica smiled. “You know what you’re doing. You can be a little reckless sometimes, but. . . it always works out in the end.” She winked. “Trust me.”

Now was Lance’s turn to smile. He thought of Keith coming over, and he helplessly tried to keep the anticipation off his face.

He dropped to the floor. “Thanks, V.”

“Anytime.”

Lance thanked her once more after she finished getting ready by helping her fix her hair. He teased and encouraged its natural waves, and artfully arranged it throughout with thin, golden bobby pins. When Veronica turned her head, inspecting his work, those small pins glittered in her hair as prettily as any jewel.

Word traveled after V went downstairs, to finish the last of the dinner preparations, that it was Lance’s handiwork. Within two, short minutes--enough time for Lance to start going through his closet for something more festive to wear--little Nadia barged in, bouncing on tiptoes.

“ _ Tío _ ,” she begged, and she didn’t have to ask anything past that.

Lance took one look at her grinning, pink face and knew what she wanted.

They went into Rachel’s vacant room, borrowing her vanity, and while Nadia poked around at the pots of cosmetics strown over the table surface, Lance combed her hair and worked his craft. Growing up with sisters and helping care for Nadia as she grew up gave Lance plenty of time to learn how to braid hair or curl it. They each had different tastes--Veronica liked elegant and sleek styles, while Rachel prefered anything that made her look more rebellious and edgy. Nadia, at only eight, still liked things cute and girly, so Lance separated her hair into two pigtails he tied off with satin ribbons that matched her top.

Her smile in the mirror was worth twice its weight in gold.

He placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned in, asking her, as he met her eyes in the glass, “Do you like it? Did I do a good job?”

Her eyes were brown, not like earth, but like the warm, sugary-brown of caramel. And they sparkled with the vanity lights, shot through with dots like tiny stars, when she smiled.

“Yes! I love it, thank you!” 

He squeezed her shoulders. Nadia slipped to the floor.

She bolted out of the room ahead of him, her raised voice calling for her mother all the way down the hall.

Lance didn’t make it quite that far. His hand fell to the light switch, and he hesitated, hearing footsteps and feeling regret step closer. He lowered his hand.

Rachel appeared in the doorway. “Do you care to do mine, too,” she asked, and Lance stepped back, shrugged, and gestured at the vanity seat.

“Guess I could,” he said.

She spared him a look. The door shut behind her, drawn closed by her trailing hands, and it confirmed the real reason Rachel sought him out.

Still, she sat down on the bench like Nadia had, gently smoothing out the wrinkles in her deep, cranberry top. Gold thread winked around the collar and the cuffs of the long sleeves. It fit her snuggly enough to accent her natural curves, and the color brought out the warmth in her skin. She caught him appraising it as he stepped up, and her small smile tried to heal the fissure that'd grown between them.

“I’ll have you know Veronica picked it out,” Rachel told him. She glanced back, but Lance didn’t meet her eye. 

He felt the sting it caused as his own, the swift, dropping feeling in his stomach, and did his best to ignore it. Reaching over her shoulder, Lance grabbed her hairbrush and began brushing through her buoyant waves. “It’s pretty,” he said blandly.

They had their talk the morning after Keith told him everything. The implanted thoughts, the manipulation she used to keep Keith away. There was more than Lance knew about; Keith might be hard to read but Lance understood when he was fully honest or not. Keith didn’t exactly lie--it didn’t have that same feel--it was just a little off from the truth. Parts omitted, Lance guessed. Worse things. Lance gave Rachel hell over it, regardless of why she did it. 

Rachel heard his thoughts about it now, as he picked over their arguments. He read it on her face, sensed the sour way it curdled her feelings. 

Lance simply brushed her hair with gently shaking hands.

“. . .you’re still upset, I get that,” Rachel attempted several minutes later. The tension in the room pressed against them like a second gravity. 

“You think,” Lance asked. He dropped the brush to the table, using his hands instead, combing Rachel’s hair into three, evenly divided parts.

Rachel grit her teeth. Lance wasn’t exactly being gentle. “Are we going to do this from now on? Be mad at each other?”

“That depends on you.”

“Me? I apologized!”

Lance yanked his hands back. “You used your gift to hurt him, Rach, what do you want me to say! ‘Oh, it’s fine, you did it because you love me’? Well, okay, but that doesn’t make it  _ right _ !”

Rachel whirled in the seat to face him. It was hard to not meet the look she shot him, the tears glossing her eyes bright. Lance swallowed. Guilt prickled his insides. 

“I know! I  _ know _ it wasn’t the right thing to do. But you could’ve been turned, Lance, and you didn’t even think about it and--and you know what? When I realized it, it scared the hell out of me. And I did some stupid things because of it. I’m  _ human _ . I messed up!”

Lance winced. Rachel’s emotions burned over him, every small, aching thing. His private guilt was quickly taken over by Rachel’s, and it hurt worse, fell inside him deeper and stronger. Lance blinked and found his eyes were wet, too.

He brushed the back of his hand across them. “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

He grabbed her head and forcibly turned it back around, trying to finish the braid he started. His quivering fingers were hardly any help.

“Lance,  _ please _ . I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I crossed the line with it.” She took one of Lance’s hands and drew it over her shoulder, tucking it right against her heart. It was unnecessary--Lance felt all of her emotions, and though he shook with his own anger, Rachel’s hurt took all of his focus.

She was sincere. The apology truly, deeply meant. And if Lance wanted to be honest with  _ himself _ , he didn’t want them to fight anymore either. He hated this anger he carried with him now. He hated remembering the way Keith felt while talking about what she’d done. He hated that for a solid week, he’d believed Keith stayed away on purpose.

“You made me think I ruined it,” he confessed as he gently tugged his hand out of her grasp. “I thought I screwed everything up with him, Rachel. Don’t you get that?”

“. . .yeah. Yeah, I do. I heard you thinking it.” Her shoulders tensed. She folded her hands against the tops of her legs. “I’m sorry, Lance. I hurt you more than kept you safe, and it wasn’t right of me.”

It wasn’t. But she wasn’t the only one between them that found lines to step across. Lance had done his fair share of awful things, while not entirely on purpose, and it was almost the same thing. Close enough, for what it was worth.

Lance didn’t say anything while he finished braiding Rachel’s hair. Rachel didn’t try to say anything either. He knew she was going over his thoughts, to see if her apology stuck. That it rang clearly and truthfully as intended.

It did. His anger still lived inside him, and it would for days to come, but it would slowly fizzle out. Lance couldn’t hold onto it anyway. It wasn’t his nature.

After securing Rachel’s hair with a hair tie, he curled his arms around her shoulders and pressed his face against the top of her head.

She heard every thought he directed at her. And he felt how they made her feel. They had an entire conversation like that, silently, in their personal languages.

Lance drew back. Rachel squeezed his fingers before he pulled his hands away.

“We’re alright,” she asked.

“We’re alright,” Lance agreed, adding, “But you better  _ never _ do anything like that again.”

Rachel’s smile appeared twice--on her face and again in the mirror. Both were sad, small things full of regret. “Promise.”

Lance wasn’t through. “He’s coming over tonight. Apologize to him,” he said. This was the one compromise, the final thing Lance asked for. “You messed him up, Rach. I don’t know how far you pushed it, because Keith wouldn’t tell me, but I know it tore him up inside.” He trailed off; Rachel watched him until he thought the things he couldn’t voice, and her eyes fell to her lap.

_ And it tore me up, too _ , he thought, because Keith’s pain was his own. Intentionally or not, aware of it or not, Lance innately pulled all of Keith’s negativity inside himself. To release the burden, to ease the pain. Keith had more than enough of it bearing against his shoulders. Lance felt it every time they were together and remembered it whenever they were apart.

Rachel’s hands curled up. Her shoulders bowed. “I’ll apologize,” she said, and her voice didn’t keep its confident tone. Lance couldn’t recall a time he’d ever heard her sound so defeated and hurt, and it pained him to be the cause of it.

Reaching forward, Lance touched her shoulder again. Some of that bad feeling started to abate, and Rachel gave a little laugh.

“It’s wild how fast you’re growing into this. I’m jealous.” She wasn’t; Lance didn’t sense any in her. “Fair, but almost. You’re like  _ mamá _ .”

Lance tilted his head. “Mom?”

“Yeah.” Rachel laid her hand over his. They met eyes through the mirror. “You’re a healer, just like her.”

Lance flushed warm.

_A healer_. Was that what he was becoming? Lance looked down at his own hands, studied each long finger and sharp knuckle, and the more time he stared, the more he felt the rightness of Rachel statement settle over him. Lance always had their mother’s gentle spirit, her kindness, and her willingness to make the world a little bit better in any way she could. Lance had been doing it his whole life; with the introduction of his empathy, Lance started doing it in the new, small ways it opened up. First, in acknowledging what he sensed from others. Next, in what he first demonstrated on Keith in the forest--the stealing, the ripping all that hate out and forcing it away. Had it developed into something more than that? _Had_ it been something more than that, from the start?  
Rachel spun on the bench, her hands clutching his. 

Their skin was the same bronze as their father’s, their hands the borrowed shape of his hardworking ones. As kids, people always confused Rachel and Lance for twins. They both shot up like reeds, were willow thin, with long torsos and legs. They only had a few years between them anyway, and they often gravitated towards one another out of all the siblings because of it. Side-by-side, it was easy to get confused.

Even their gifts were closest. Mind-reading and Empathy. Thoughts and feelings. The mind and the heart.

Rachel smiled again. “The mind and the heart,” she repeated, plucking Lance’s words right from his head. “I like the sound of that.”

Lance glanced up at her. “Do you really think that?”

She knew exactly what he meant. “Yes. When are you going to stop doubting yourself? Open up a little, Lance. It’s all in you, waiting to come out.”

Rachel gave his hand a final, encouraging squeeze, then left the room, leaving Lance behind with his thoughts. He had plenty to sort through, plenty to evaluate and piece together. 

He ended up sitting on the bench where Rachel had been, awash in the vanity lights, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His blue eyes blanched under the intense shine, his skin lightened, his features sharpened above each deepened shadow. 

He wasn’t the same person he’d been at the end of summer.

Like the forest outside, like the entire, sweeping, autumn-touched valley of Indigo Pull, Lance was going through his own metamorphosis one, bright fall color at a time.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Keith kept to his promise: As dusk thinned on the horizon, the sun dropping behind the crop of spiny mountain backs, he arrived as suddenly and surely as the stars.

Lance sensed him the moment he took a step up the driveway. His unfurling smile gave him away to his nosy sisters, who teased him until he abandoned his place at the table and went to wait at the door. All for appearance's sake. Rachel, and probably V, knew that Lance confided their family history to Keith, but no one else in the family did. So, Lance resigned to stay inside, though his kicking heart and his own, impatient feet urged him to go out on the porch.

It took two minutes, max, for Keith’s boots to hit the stairs.

For Lance, it stretched on like years and years and years.

There came a knock, and Lance jerked open the door before Keith had time to brush his knuckles against it a second time.

Keith’s smile hit him with its full warmth, like a blast from an opened oven door. Lance watched him lower his hand, and, before his mother could interrupt, Lance stepped outside (finally), closing the door behind his back.

“Hey,” Keith said. He buzzed inside like the porchlight did with moths--everything was quick, fluttering wings. “You--you look nice.”

Lance glanced down, grabbing the bottom of his shirt. He jerked it out, looked at it, and laughed. “Wow, okay, don’t just start off by saying that. Because I immediately forgot what I was wearing.” A black button-down left open over a simple, purple shirt. Darkly dyed denim jeans. His old Converse. Nothing special. “But, thanks. I’ll make sure to wear this as much as possible now.”

Keith laughed. “ _ Lance _ .”

Truth be told,  _ Keith _ looked way better put together. He wore a red shirt and black jeans, which was normal, just tonight he’d traded his usual crop jacket for a black, leather one. Lance had his hands out, touching it, once he realized it was new. 

“Jeez, this is nice,” he said, fingers trailing up the silver zipper. It  _ smelled _ new, and unmistakably real. “Where’d you get this?”

Keith’s eyes softened. “Shiro,” he said. “It was my dad’s. Or. . .no, I guess it’s  _ from _ my dad. With everything going on, Shiro forgot he had it until we finished unpacking the last boxes yesterday. It was wrapped up and everything. A birthday present, I guess. I don’t. . .I guess there’s no way really to know.”

It was a sweet thing to hear, and almost bitter to feel. Said fondly, but, at the same time, it caught painfully at Keith’s heart.

Lance slid his hands past the jacket, inside it, rubbing his palms around to Keith’s back. He sunk into him, arms buried under the lining, and pressed his face against Keith’s collarbone. When he breathed in, Lance smelled the perfume of leather mixed with Keith’s woodsy, earthy scent. Keith snaked his arms around Lance’s waist in return, palms tucked against his lower back, fingertips daring to poke past the top of his jeans.

“I’m sorry,” Lance murmured, his breath tickling up Keith’s throat. “You’ve been over here all of three minutes, and you’re already sad.”

“No, it’s fine. I knew you’d ask about it. I think that’s another reason why I wore it tonight.”

“Yeah? What’s the other reason?” Lance asked, trying to steer the conversation onto better grounds. Places where Keith would bubble inside with delight and laughter, not reigned-in grief. “Can I guess?”

Laughter touched Keith’s words, “Go for it.”

“Well,” he drew out the word, stepping back. Keith hands slid away, dragging across his skin each and every inch until they fell away. “Obviously because you look  _ great _ in it, and you knew I’d say, like, ten things about it-- _ minimum _ \--before the night was over.”

Keith grinned. “That easy, huh?”

Got him.

Lance lifted a shoulder and crossed his arms. “I’m not sure if you’re implying that you’re easy to guess or I’m easy to please but, yes.”

“To which one?”

“Both.”

Keith rolled his eyes. The smile on his face gave him away. The steady calm of his heart, the pleasure nestled there, told all his secrets.

Lance gave him a gentle shove. “Stop that.” 

Keith caught his arm. With a slight twist, he pulled it forward, pushing up his sleeve the elbow. He glanced down, focused on the blue bruise now visible in the fading light. “Which part?”

He didn’t respond.

Lance was too interested in the tender look on Keith’s face, the matching way he held onto his arm. The bruise was starting to fade, blues edged with faint violet, healing slowly and surely as any other would. Keith’s fingers traced against it, barely a touch at all.

It did something inside him, burned him suddenly, fiercely hot, right in the pit of his stomach--and lower.

A small noise rolled past Lance’s lips.

He jerked his arm back, eyes wide.

Keith straightened in surprise. “What?”

“Okay, so we should maybe  _ not _ do that,” Lance huffed. His knees were shaking. Why were his  _ knees shaking _ ? “Whoo, boy, that’s new.”

Lance folded his hand around his wrist. He got the same shivers as before, but it was nothing to how it felt when Keith touched it. That--it boiled through him and it made him  _ want _ Keith to grab it again. Grab it and press against it and make it hurt.

Flushed, Lance stepped jerkily around Keith and sat down on the first porch step. He landed hard on his ass, knees up.

“Lance?” Keith dropped beside him. He was colored with worry, while Lance ached with all these demanding things. They couldn’t be further apart and they were crammed together on the same, narrow step.

Lance turned his head. He rode the feelings inside him--both of theirs--and kissed Keith hard on the mouth. “Distract me,” he breathed when he rocked back, voice ragged. Oh, that made it worse. Keith lit up, caught the same fire, and Lance had the gracious agony of sitting there, feeling everything twice. “Nope, no no no, you’re doing exactly the opposite of that, thanks.”

“Sorry.” Keith cleared his throat. Lance felt him try to wrestle his emotions down. “Okay, I, uh. . .I don’t know what to do?”

“Talk,” Lance prompted. “You--oh, you had lunch with Shiro today, didn’t you? How’d that go?  _ Did _ it go? Tell me about that?” He turned his head and saw every, beautiful color of sunset dancing in Keith’s eyes. Lance swallowed.

“Yeah.” Keith stretched out his legs, his hands folded over the lip of the stairs. He pointedly looked out towards the yard like he thought that might help. “He cooked for us. Ham and green beans, rolls. All that. And. . .I couldn't  _ not _ eat after he went to all the trouble.” A miserable noise caught in his throat. 

Lance bit his lip. “Uh-oh. How'd that turn out?” Lingering nausea bumped against Lance's keen perception. It snuffed some of the other feelings raging inside him. “Yikes, alright.”

“Yeah. I'm kinda glad we. . .well you. . .” Keith gestured vaguely, pointing at his wrist. “You know. I think it’s the only reason it didn’t get so bad.”

Made sense. Lance made a flashy little flourish at him, brows raised. “Glad to be of service.”

Keith fell quiet. Lance started bouncing his leg. 

After a moment, in the silence of Indigo Pull's advancing night, Keith asked, “Are you feeling better?”

Lance almost laughed. But it wasn't funny. He squeezed his hand around his wrist, thinking about what it all meant and why it'd happened and why he really wanted it to happen again. “Fine, I guess. What about you? Can you stomach some of my mom's cookies because, I want to warn you, she's probably going to insist you eat some the moment you walk in there.”

Keith, if possible, paled at the mention. “I hope not.”

Lance bumped him. “I'll cover you. Slip them to me.”

He rocked up on his feet, holding out his hand. Keith took it and rose up with him, and the sunset caressed his face in purples and flushed him pink. The silver trim on his jacket blazed like it'd caught fire.

Everyone turned to greet them when they stepped inside together, locked by their hands. Lance's mom and dad, his brothers and sisters, his grinning niece and nephew, his sharp-eyed  _ abuela _ at the head of the table. They were a band of bright, wide smiles and appraising looks. They were pleased and happy and everything Keith was not.

All the attention made Keith nervous. As if these weren't people Keith had met before, or seen before or had conversations with. The situation made all the difference--Lance's hand in his, the way they stood half-a-step away from each other. His nerves squirmed in Lance's own belly. 

Lance ran his thumb over Keith's knuckles. “Look who showed up,” he said, teasing, smiling at Keith when he looked. 

His mother stood up on her feet. She clasped her hands in front of her, eyes shining in delight. “Keith, welcome! Pull up a sit,  _ hijo _ , eat! There's plenty left!”

“Uh, hi,” Keith stumbled, glancing at Lance then to Mrs. McClain then, ultimately, down to the floor. His face was just as twisted up as his insides. “I'm--not hungry.”

“He ate with Shiro,  _ mamá _ ,” Lance provided.

He took Keith to their seats, sparing him further scrutiny. It helped. Being able to hide their hands under the table, the fact they were  _ sitting _ and not standing in front of all those searching eyes, it calmed part of the storm. The rest thrashed around, compiled of hailstone anxiety and whirlwind shame, despite Lance’s gentle attempts to ease it away.

While his mother fussed Keith over a small plate of desserts--because ‘everyone always has room for seconds on sweets,’ as she put it--Lance studied the rest of his family a little more closely. His mother was obviously ecstatic; it buzzed and sparkled underneath Keith’s rolling discomfort. V and Rach were sharing secret looks and smiles, Lance was pleased to note. Marco and Luis, on the other hand, continued to clean their plates once they said their ‘hello’s, as if this was nothing special. The kids vied for Keith’s attention from the end of the table, their raised voices turning Keith’s head. Lance leaned back as Keith leaned forward, and in the tiniest way possible, Keith waved his fingers at them. It made their entire day, if their grinning faces gave anything away.

And just like that, Keith was properly welcomed into the family.

The conversations grew around them again like weeds in a garden. It gathered and threw itself around, filled the room with laughter and raised voices. Lance inherited that as much as he’d inherited his blue eyes or his dark skin, this loud way of  _ being _ . He never knew to shy away from it, certainly never here, where you  _ had _ to speak up to be heard amongst the din of a whole family speaking at once, living at once, sharing and listening and commenting on everything together. No topic was too bland for the McClain’s, or any too controversial. They spoke what their hearts were feeling, whatever passion sparked a light on their tongues, and even with Keith there, wide-eyed and trying hard to focus on all the noise at once, it didn’t slow them down one bit.

Veronica and Luis debated over politics at one end of the table; Nadia and Sylvio tried deciding who’d be the one to ask to go outside after dinner. Marco overheard them and chuckled around bites of rum cake and, when found out, was the adult that gave the two permission to leave once their plates were clean.

Nadia made a special stop by Lance and Keith’s seats for the specific purpose of showing Keith her hair. “Do you like it?  _ Tío _ did it for me,” she said proudly, pointing up at the ribbons. One was a little looser than the other--from Sylvio, Lance suspected--and with quick hands, Lance fixed it right again.

“It’s really pretty.” Keith shared Nadia’s smile at the compliment. Lance caught both and grinned widest of the three. “I like the ribbons.”

“Me too!” 

Lance patted Nadia’s shoulder. “I think I should get into the business of doing hair, if I’m going to get this much love out of it.”

He sent her off with a quick bump of their fists, and watched her join Sylvio by the door. They left in a rush and a blast of cold, snow-scented air blowing in from the opened door. Their shrieks and loud laughter poured into Lance’s heart every step they took.

Lance’s dad walked between the dining room and the kitchen, taking plates to the sink or fetching drinks or more cookies for those who asked. He offered Keith three separate times to grab him something. Each time, Keith politely declined, and, finally Lance urged him away, telling him, “Stop picking on him, dad!”

The grin Diego McClain shot them had Lance’s exact design. Another hand-me-down shown on open display. Lance felt Keith straighten up beside him. “What’s the fun in that,” he asked. His laugh was rough around the edges, partially wheezed and partially whistled. “Leave your old man alone, Lance. Let him pick.”

“Between you and mom, you’ll chase him off,” Lance argued, just as playfully. A corner of Keith’s mouth twitched up. “He won’t come back if this is how you treat him after he finally comes over for dinner!”

Keith piped up, quietest one in the room, “‘Finally’?”

Diego dropped his hand to Keith’s shoulder and gave him an affectionate little shake. “Naw, I think he’d come back. Wouldn’t you, Keith?”

“ _ Dad _ .” Lance pushed him away before Keith had the chance to answer. To Keith, he said, “He’s hit the rum cake too hard, ignore him.”

“But,” Keith said, “He’s right.”

Lance went pink. They had the pleasure of listening to his dad whistle-wheeze all the way back into the kitchen for another slice of cake.

“Told you, my boy! Your Pop-pop knows best!”

Ears burning, Lance pressed his free hand over his eyes, and felt Keith trip in confusion beside him.

“What,” he asked.

“You embarrassed him,” came Rachel’s sure voice across the table. It was the first she’d spoken since Keith came in. And it became the first time Keith let go of Lance’s hand under the table, too. “Wait, no, it’s okay. Not like that, just what you said and how you said it, all serious.”

Lance rubbed his hand down his nose. “Rach. . .”

“They aren’t paying attention,” she said, and Lance knew the rest of the family was too caught up in what they were doing to notice Rachel’s soft slip into her gift. She nodded, the smallest twitch of her chin. “Also I just wanted to say that I like your jacket, Keith. Real badass.”

Keith looked at her and processed that. “Thanks. It. . .it was from my dad,” he told her, and somehow, that lifted a bit of the tension between them.

Rachel smiled. “He had good taste. It’s nice.”

It was an apology, in a way, a certain type Lance didn’t really, fully understand. If Lance didn’t feel it, he saw it in the soft way Keith smiled, his fingers smoothing over the jacket, the rough zipper tooth.

Keith caught him looking. “Yeah?”

“Nothing. Just. . .this is nice,” Lance admitted. He snagged a cookie off Keith’s plate and popped the whole thing into his mouth. “You should come over for dinner more often. Or, you know, just in general.”

Keith laughed, again, the softest one in the house. “Yeah?” he asked again.

Lance heard him loud and clear. He would’ve even if they weren’t sitting side-by-side. “Yeah.”

There came that familiar warmth from Keith, the spreading, consuming one that swallowed him from his throat down to his stomach. Lance pressed his mouth against his hand and turned away, hiding his smile from sight. Rachel chuckled to herself.

With every passing moment, Lance became a little fuller. From food. From conversation. From the energy swirling around. He was a river of all the love and caring in house, a network of streams branching from him and to him, taking and giving in a cycle that wouldn’t stop. It drained and it flooded. It was warmth and sweetness and the flavor of sugar on his tongue. It was the idle appreciation of watching Keith shrug out of his jacket, the slip of his shirt riding up his back, the peek-a-boo flashes of intimate skin he spied. It turned into Rachel’s laughter, Veronica’s teasing, their dad’s calloused hand patting the top of Lance’s hair when he walked past for the fourth and fifth and eighth times. The streams were his mother’s heart beating as fully as his, his brothers joking, his  _ abuela _ ’s wrinkled smile.

Lance wished Pidge and Hunk were there, crammed around the table with everyone else, eating and laughing and close enough Lance could feel them like he felt everyone else. He wished it so absolutely tears sprung into his eyes.

His family was almost perfect, almost complete.

Someone touched his face. A thumb swiped a tear from his lashes before it rained down his cheek.

Days after, and Keith’s hands were still warm. Cupped around his cheek like that, fingers inching over the shell of his ear, Lance drank the heat of it in, the tenderness of how Keith held him.

“Hey.” Keith drifted forward, a little closer, filling more of Lance’s line of sight, demanding more of his attention. A distraction. Their legs touched. Their bodies leaned towards the other automatically, magnets with attracting poles. “What’s wrong?”

Lance shook his head. He worked his mouth around a hundred different things to say, but they were all too big or too small for his tongue to work around. None were the correct shape or had the right meaning to express what he wanted to say.

Tears puddled in his eyes.

Why was he being so stupid about this all of a sudden?

Keith watched him in his silent way, holding onto him, giving him the comfort of his nearness. He didn’t ask again, didn’t prod into why Lance bent forward or covered his face with his hands like that. He listened and waited, there when Lance would need him, his rough fingers combing back through his hair.

“Oh, Lance,” he heard Veronica sigh, her voice muffled inside her wine glass. Was this a future she’d seen? Would she know why he couldn’t stop the sobs clawing up the back of his throat? Why it felt like he wanted to scream?

Lance’s stomach rolled. His hands started shaking. Across the table, Rachel looked at him, eyes softened in concern. The fingers in his hair fell to the back of his neck, Keith’s quiet attention attempting to ease this upset he as best he could.

It was like being at the Holt’s for Adam’s funeral all over again. Lance’s senses were muddled, split into too many parts. He couldn’t focus with all the emotions around him--and it was why he misunderstood why he was sick with nerves.

Because they weren’t  _ his _ nerves at all.

Lance shot up from his chair.

It toppled back, struck the floor with a  _ bang! _ that silenced the room in a single, breath-drawn second.

Keith snapped up too, head turned. He was up on his feet, looking towards the door; his breathing paused, snared in his throat.

Veronica’s glass slipped from her hand.

Rachel’s chair flung back next, striking the wall. Her heavy heels struck the floor, Lance and Keith’s right behind her. Chair legs squealed back; the thunder of the rest of the family rising to their feet rumbled through the floorboards.

Someone said, “ _ Nadia, _ ” and like an answered prayer, a scream shrilled through the house.

The door flew open. Cold, November air rushed over Lance’s bare arms, snow-kissed, scented sharply wet and like--woodsmoke. Char and ash. Burning and burnt things.

Keith flew ahead of him--faster, always faster--hooking around the house. His face lit up. The shock and horror of every flickering hue of orange and yellow danced over him, shuddered his shadow. He didn’t hesitate. He bolted forward again, right into the light.

Lance made it to where Keith was and wasn’t anymore, and his legs buckled.

Fire devoured the wall and roof of the chicken coop, smoke pouring out of the window holes oil-dark and thick. Shrieking chickens flocked around the yard, a flurry of grayed feathers and terror, their small bodies running or half-flying away from the blaze. Someone cried nearby. Someone else stood, backlit, a blot of dark against the bright color of the flames.

“Nadia!” Lance screamed. “Sylvio!”

He couldn’t see where Keith went.

He didn’t have time to question it. The slam of Sylvio’s fear pulled Lance over to the grass where he lay, sprawled on his hands and legs, shaking. Lance grabbed him up, and Sylvio grasped onto his shirt, climbing into Lance’s arms while sobs rocked his small body against Lance’s chest.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Lance breathed. “I got you, it’s okay, Sylvio, I’m right here.”

“Nadia--” It came out sobbed and choked, barely audible. Lance pulled in every ounce of fear that grabbed at his nephew’s throat. “She-- _ Tío _ , she--”

Lance took in all the bad. His hands quaked. He almost puked. But Sylvio eased up in his arms, just a little, which was a lot more than Lance thought he could offer.

Around them, the world burned.

The dark shape in the flames--it fit Nadia’s height, her wispy-thin frame. The shadows wore their hair just like her, tied up in ribbons that melted away, flaked into ash. Wood cracked and split in a spray of sparks. The coop’s roof slanted further towards the ground. Smoke stung Lance’s eyes, the bright heat.

Seconds. All this in seconds.

Nadia turned. The flames cast over her face, her wet cheeks broadcasted in new lines of fire.

Her clothes were burning off of her.

Lance blinked, and she was gone.

What replaced her, in the empty slot of brown grass that refused to burn, was someone’s wailing agony. 

Hands thrust forward out of the dark. Lisa’s. She gathered Sylvio up, stole him from Lance. Her tears were Lance’s. Her relief and knife-sharp uncertainty. And pain, scorching up his spine, sending Lance down to his knees. Not hers, someone else’s, someone whose pain Lance knew as well as any of his own.

Luis tore past where Lance swooned forward and collapsed. Lance tried to ask where Keith was. The question transmuted as it left his mouth, turned to a second scream in the night.

Somewhere, their father gathered hoses and buckets and all the things fire feared: Water and courage and determination.

Somewhere, one of his brothers called out, “Get them inside! Quick!”

Somewhere else, somewhere further away, Keith was burning alive.

Right there, crumpled in the dirt, Lance caught fire with him. His back--Keith’s back-- _ the skin of their backs blistered and melted and burned and it hurt worse than anything he knew or would ever know and it hurt it hurt it hurt it. . . _

Rachel appeared above him, soot-faced and grim, Death wearing familiar clothes. He was dying. And if he was dying, Keith was dying. Lance heard him howling, the breaks in his distant voice clutched around the base of Lance’s neck. His sister pressed her hands to his face. They were cool, they were ice, they were a new type of pain stinging against his ruined skin.

“ _ Lance, _ I need you to focus on me,” she pleaded. Her face drifted in and out of the smoke, edged around in black, her voice dream-soft and farway. “No, I’m right here, Lance! Not on Keith-- focus on  _ me _ !”

He turned away from her and retched. Vomit dashed across the grass. It left metal in his mouth, the taste of copper and salt.

He heaved again. Again. Again. He emptied his stomach once, twice, until nothing remained, not even his screaming, not even his erratic, splittered thoughts.

Rachel yanked him up by his arms. Lance fumbled for footing, staggered and fell against her, his weight bending both of their legs. Her emotions slapped him like her hands, and slowly, involuntarily, Lance tuned into them, slipped into them, and let them become him like Keith’s.

Lance blinked and the yard dimmed. He blinked and Rachel half-pulled him up the porch steps. He blinked and he breathed and he tasted ash drifting with the flurries, white and off-white, cold and warm. Both caught in his hair. Both kissed his cheeks, but only one lingered.

The pain didn’t vanish entirely; every dragging step towards the house brought it back in flashes. The fear rushed in, rushed out, tidal, crashing around him. And when Rachel pulled him through the door, no matter how hard Lance listened to Rachel’s emotions, he split apart and became a river again.

Inside was a second chaos, a different kind of fire.

His family rushed and ran, their feet drums, their hearts drumming, their shock and sickness replaying beat-for-beat in Lance’s heart. Dimly, Lance watched his aunt on the couch, cradling Sylvio in her arms, rocking gently, her hands there to sooth away his scared crying. He watched Veronica and Marco bleed into movement, in the hallway one moment, the living room next, the kitchen another. Lance couldn’t keep up. Every time he blinked, the room rearranged with people.

Rachel, alone, kept beside him, even if the setting changed. The picture-flocked walls fell to couches and rugs that became the kitchen’s sunny decor.

The worst of the energy bloomed from here. It was the loudest in two seperate ways, and Lance heard them both clearly, felt them both clearly, and his feet forgot how to move.

Nadia sat on the table. Her clothes were gone, offered to the fire. It left its imprint on her, colored her skin with smudges of black soot. But, though her eyes were bright with tears, she wasn’t hurt. Fear made her cry, nothing else. His  _ abuela _ stood in front of her, ointment jars in her hands, ready for burns she wouldn’t find. 

Lance went weak with relief.

And then with sudden, searing pain.

Any control he thought he had, Lance lost it. He dropped out of Rachel’s hands, hit the floor hard on his knees.

“Mom!  _ Mom _ , he needs you!” Rachel’s voice broke over him like water, and with it, the other sounds of the house. The crying, the frantic talking--his mother’s, his  _ abuela _ ’s, Veronica--saying things he heard but couldn’t make sense of.

The sounds of someone biting back screams.

Movement on the table made him look up--the energy, the familiarity, pulled Lance’s eyes forward and to the back of the room.

Keith lay on the other end of the table, the place hurriedly cleared off to make room for him. His back was exposed under the light; his shirt, missing, burned or cut away. Lance saw pink and black and red. Lance felt it boil over him, every place on Keith that the fire had touched.

“Lance-- _ don’t _ \--” It came out strained, pushed between his teeth. “I’m-- _ fine _ \--stop it--”

Lance watched Keith push up slightly on shaking, soot-streaked arms. His dark hair tangled over his face, casting shadows and tricks of the overhead light--but it didn’t hide the truth looking back with bright, amethyst eyes. Or the wrong shape of his lips, bulging out from his fangs.

The room did that thing again, everything slanting in the wrong direction. Pressure hooked under one of his arms, jerked him back from hitting the floor. Then another, under the opposite arm, forcing him to sit up right.

His mother squatted down in front of him. She reached for his face, and the exact moment her skin touched his, Lance came back to himself. Every fuzzy thing sharpened; he heard the conversations clearly, the crying and the barely contained hysteria thundering in the room.  _ Everything _ .

Lance sucked in a breath.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, her voice oddly calm. “I need you to get him away from here, Marco.”

“I can do that,” his brother said at his other side. Lance couldn’t remember when he’d showed up.

Lance circled his fingers around his mother’s wrists, holding her as she held on to him, and he shook his head. “No,” he told her, his siblings, everyone in and out of the room that could hear him. “No, I  _ can’t _ ,  _ mam _ _ á _ , I have to stay--”

Keith slammed his fist against the table. Nadia, and the few remaining pieces of silverware, jumped. “No,” the word growled out, shot with all the pain Lance had felt. “ _ Go _ .”

“I’m sorry,  _ mijo _ , I am, but he’s right. If you stay, you’ll hurt yourself.” She always smelled like a kitchen at noon, warm and spiced, and tonight she was that and more. She was every sort of comfort Lance could imagine, and some he could not. Her kiss fell to his forehead and her arms fell away. “Marco, get him up.”

Lance watched her stand. Without her hands, her magic, her steady heart drawing in his attention, the room blurred and buckled again. Lance’s thoughts scattered, hooked on to what they found closest--Nadia’s racing heart, Keith’s silent pleading, Veronica standing behind them, sick to her stomach.

Marco jerked him up on his feet. Their mother returned, quick on hers, and pushed something soft into Lance’s hands.

“Make sure he eats this. All of it, down to the last bite. Do you hear me, Lance? Eat that for me.” She patted his cheek, once, when she asked, so he had time to understand.

“I--”

She left before he answered. The noise in the room caved in around him. Keith fell back against the table, exhaustion eating away at him, at Lance. Their limbs were lead. They were marble carved to stand in one, exact spot for the rest of time.

Marco hit his shoulder. “Move,” he ordered. “Come on.”

Leaving was the same as entering: Lance stumbled and blinked through the changing of the scenery, the noise in his head, the pain reappearing and disappearing up his back. Leftover holiday spice turned into the perfume of smoke high on the wind. Warmth became the biting, November chill of late evening. Hard wood floors went softer underfoot, grass and dirt slipping beneath his shoes.

Lance walked dumbly, following Marco down the driveway. Gravel crunched out more conversation than the two of them did.

They passed their mailbox, the repeating fence-line. They walked until the driveway became the road. They walked until Lance only smelled smoke clinging to their clothes. They walked until Lance faltered, his senses suddenly and very much his own again.

Marco stopped beside him. He was the only thing Lance sensed, his concern ringing loud and clear, not buried in all the rest. “You back,” he asked.

Lance spun around. The driveway trailed up in the distance, leading back to the small, orange squares lit up in the house. From here, Lance couldn’t see any evidence of the fire. No blazing light, no pillar of smoke. Nothing. Just a dark night sky and the distance they’d put between here and home.

“How. . .How long have we been walking?” For Lance, it’d happened in blips. There and now here. He barely remembered moving his feet.

“There you are.” Marco’s relief cooled Lance’s insides. “Doesn’t matter. We walked as far as we needed to. Right?”

It took Lance a moment to understand what he was asking. “I don’t. . .I can’t sense anyone else.”

Marco breathed out a heavy sigh. It clouded in the crisp air. “Okay. Okay, well, then. Sit.” He pointed to the side of the road, where the hill of their property line started its slow upward climb. “And eat that. Don’t forget.”

Lance looked down at his hands. Clutched in one was a dinner roll, smashed in with the deep imprints of his fingers. How he hadn’t dropped it was a miracle in itself.

He went and he sat and he ate, all as instructed. His head still didn’t feel right. The food helped but only because it was glazed in honey butter and magic. It tingled on his tongue, as it rolled down into his belly. Bite-by-bite, Lance came back to himself a little more.

It was worse than the haze, the broken memories he took time to think back on. Not just the pain, but the screams that pulled past his own lips, Keith’s becoming his own. Another stolen thing. The quick images of Rachel’s worried face. Nadia’s golden, fire-touched tears. Sylvio’s nightmare-horror. Veronica’s nauseating self-doubt.

Lance shoved the last of the roll into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

He rocked to his feet the next instant, committed to heading back, to make things right. He’d been next to useless during the whole thing, another worry cast out for his family to fumble around. Between the kids and Keith and the fire, they were already pulled thin. No wonder he’d been sent out.

His head was clearer now. And the residual stuff--the stale memory of pain and sickness and being split into too many parts--Lance could ignore that. He’d  _ make  _ himself ignore it. He had to go back. For Sylvio and Nadia.

He had to go back for Keith.

Marco didn’t understand that. Out of his siblings, he was the most stubborn-footed. Once his mind was set, it didn’t budge. Marco stepped in front of him, arms folded, and blocked Lance’s way. “Where the hell are you going? I told you to sit and chill out.”

“I can’t.” Even to Lance, his voice sounded off. Dull, worn, tired. Clearing his throat didn’t help. Pretending he was fine didn’t help, either. Still, he tried. What else was there to do? “Don’t do this, Marco,  _ please. _ ”

“Nah, see, mom told me to get you out of there, and I told her I would. She didn’t just say it to say it. Sit your ass back down, Lance.”

Like his busted knuckles, his tears and his anger, Keith’s burns were Lance’s too. Lance couldn’t leave him alone. He’d seen his eyes. His fangs. There was no hiding it now, no hiding anything.

Marco tried again, speaking softer, “We can go back once you’re okay.”

But he’d never be okay. The terror took him over the longer Lance thought about it, gutted him, hollowed him to bones. Every space quickly filled up with Nadia’s crying, Sylvio’s hysterics, Keith’s fist slamming against the table top. Phantom pain gnawed up Lance’s back, claw-like, with tearing teeth. He couldn’t think past it. It was that and only that, Keith’s agony his, any he could take.

If they’d been one step closer to the house, if his gift was even the slightest bit stronger, Lance would’ve grabbed it all for his own.

“Lance--”

Looking at Marco took more will than Lance knew he had left in him. Nighttime stole every shape, turned it into shadows. His brother was another black, formless thing. A half-dream. A nightmare that kept talking. 

Lance took a step. Marco mirrored it.

His brother grabbed him by the arms. “Sit,” he said again. “You’re going out of it.”

“I’m not, I’m  _ fine _ , I’m--”

Marco frowned. “No, you’re not. Are you even listening to yourself? Tell me: What good are you going to do anyway? I was there, Lance. I saw what you looked like when you came inside. You were half out of your mind.”

Lance jerked out of his touch. “I got it now,” he said, not sounding as sure as he wanted to. He winced, lowered his eyes. At least his hands weren’t shaking. “If I can focus on Rach or Mom, I’ll be okay.”

“And do what then? They’re fine up there. Dad and Luis took care of the fire. Mom’s taking care of Nadia and Keith. What else is there for you to do?”

The answer was obvious. Lance had already said it once, and he’d say it as many times as it took for it to be understood: “I have to get back to Keith.”

His stomach lurched when he said it. His own worries coming alive. The whole family knew now, what Keith was. The pain made Keith’s control break like it made Lance go, as Marco put it, ‘half out of his mind’. 

The look Marco wore caused Lance to look away. It was colored in the same, deep hue of the pity he held inside. “He’s going to be fine. I. . .okay, I don’t really know what’s going on, but his burns were already healing. Like, fast. Faster than even mom can do.”

Oh. Oh, of course.

Lance McClain was one big idiot.

He pressed his hands over his face, knees weak, and nearly sank to the ground. Keith was healing on his own. His mom would speed along the rest. Lance swallowed.

Keith would be okay.

Marco shifted his weight from one leg to the other. His questions flitted inside him, bumping, nagging little gnats Lance felt like an itch in the back of his mind. “So. . .can I ask something?”

Lance dropped his arms. One look at Marco said that they were staying until he decided Lance really and truly felt better. And, truth be told, Lance was tired. He didn’t want to fight or argue or spend countless minutes running around in circles.

Resigned, Lance shuffled back over to the gentle slope he’d sat on before and fell back against it. This time, Marco joined him, sitting at his side.

“Go ahead.”

What Marco asked wasn’t the question Lance thought it’d be. “That Keith guy. . .you’re really in it with him, aren’t you?”

Under any other circumstance, Lance might’ve laughed. Instead, he stared blankly up at the sky, wishing for the distraction of stars. Flurries kissed his face, apologizing. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, obvious reasons.” Marco shrugged. “Mostly thought it’d help you feel better, if you wanted to talk about him.”

Lance glanced over at him. “. . .maybe. Seeing him would be better.”

“No dice. Roll again.”

Lance twisted his fingers. “Nadia,” he asked. He squeezed his hands tight. “She looked fine, but I--she caused the fire, didn’t she?”

He couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t seen it himself, but Sylvio’s broken sobs were all in her name. A lot of the story existed outside of the scraps Lance knew.

Marco rubbed at his chin. His heart tripped, his insides went tight. Lance watched him and felt it. “Yeah. . .yeah, I think she did.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“. . .magic, I guess. Whatever it is you and mom and our sisters have. Luis said something about it. And it sure looked it. The fire was all concentrated in one spot. It made a path to where Nadia was standing, that’s it. And, like you said, she wasn’t hurt. Part of that was Keith--you didn’t see him? He rushed in and grabbed her from the middle of it and took her over to Luis.” Marco reached forward, plucking absently at the grass, pulling up one blade at a time. “It scared her, when he did that. I don’t remember Keith’s shirt being on fire before that, but by the time he made it to Luis, he was lit up like the coop.”

Lance held his breath.

Marco tossed the grass in his hands out towards the road. “It’s no wonder you lost your head. I don’t have any of this magic stuff, and  _ I _ felt like I was losing my goddamn mind from panic.” He glanced over. “I can’t imagine how you got through it.”

Barely. And then, almost not at all. Butter sweetened the inside of his mouth, and helped Lance steady himself. “Rachel,” he admitted. “Mom.”

“Makes sense.” Marco tore up browned clover by the handful, working through his anxious energy. Lance’s fingers twitched towards him automatically. “As long as everyone is okay, in the end. That’s all the matters. Lost some chickens, though.”

Lance bit the inside of his cheek. “Keith,” he started to say, because Marco was avoiding it. Better to air that out while they were at it.

“Yeah. I have something to say about him, too.” Slapping his hands together, he rubbed away the dead clover petals, the wilted stems. “I don’t care what he is. He ran into a fire to save my niece, I don’t give a shit if he has fangs or claws or transforms under a full moon.” Marco looked down at Lance. His honesty shone in every part of him--his face, his voice, the emotions Lance glimpsed at. Lance warmed. “Don’t waste time worrying about that. He’s a good kid. I see why you like him so much.”

Lance pushed up from the grass. Tears punched the backs of his eyes. Were they his? Marco’s? He blinked and swallowed and it didn’t matter then, whose they were. Lance cried them out all the same, no matter where they came from or why.

“I have to go back,” he said, this time pleading.

Marco steeled his shoulders. Wind ruffled his hair, tossed it over his eyes and away again, hiding and revealing the hard look of concentration knit between his brows.

“. . .Okay,” he finally gave in. Lance scrambled up on his feet. “But! The first second you start losing it, I’m dragging you out of there myself.”

“Deal.” 

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Their mother wouldn’t let Lance up into his room until she sat him down in one of the living room recliners and handed him a plate of cookies she expected him to eat.

“All of them,” she said.

There were six, arranged in a complete circle, patterned by the type of jam spooned in their thumbprint centers. Three raspberry, one lemon, two blueberry. It was a lot to eat.

“I’m not hungry.”

“They’re not for your stomach.” She pointed again, towards the single lemon cookie. “For your  _ head _ . Eat. Or sit down here.”

Lance cut a glance to Marco and was met with a shrug.

“I’d just eat them, Lance. Get it over with. At least it’s cookies and not, like, a bowl of peas.”

Lance grimaced. Point taken.

He ate them as quickly as he could without drawing his mother’s attention, and sat the entire while with her hands soothing back his hair. By the time the plate was clean, Lance’s eyes were heavy and his body sagged against the back of the recliner. His head dipped forward.

His mother pulled away. She spoke in her fluid Spanish, apologizing for something she’d done. Lance understood every other word, and understood less why it mattered. Why was she sorry?

He heard Marco step forward, the low rumble of his voice answering what their mother said. The words drifted away, out of reach, like smoke. 

Lance wanted to laugh at that. 

He wasn’t sure why.

_ ♰♰♰ _

If he dreamed, Lance didn’t remember it when he woke up, hours later, the taste of old sugar fuzzing his teeth. He looked at the clock to see the time, and rolled over again, drowsy and slow. 

Someone sat on the other side of his bed, watching him quietly.

Lance blinked at them, squinting. The room was too dark to see properly in, thanks to the pinned blankets he never took down from his window. Every day dawned like it planned to storm, and Lance came to enjoy it. He meant to tell Keith that. Never did. He always forgot or spent the whole time talking about something else just as pointless.

He started drifting off again, thinking of all the things he meant to say. There was a lot, all bunched up inside of him, taking up room. He really needed to get them out. Maybe when he woke up he’d have the chance to.

Fingers brushed along his jaw. Tentative. Unsure.

“Lance?”

Lance didn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t see anyway. “. . .mh?”

“Are you awake?”

“What?”

Another touch--not from hands this time, but by crisp disappointment.

It hit Lance hammer-hard. His grogginess broke apart like thawing ice over a pond, in cracks and sudden clarity as it sunk beneath the surface.

Lance jolted up.

In his haste, Lance cracked his cheek against someone’s chin. Not someone’s, no. Lance recognized his voice, the way his fingers had slid along his jaw.

Lance slapped on the bedside light, and, sure enough, Keith sat there, rubbing a hand over his chin.

It was Keith’s turn to squint. “Ow?”

Everything rushed back: Nadia, the fire, Keith on the table, Keith with burns blistering up his back, Keith’s eyes glowing lilac and yellow. Lance’s memory wasn’t good past that. There was crying and upset thick as August humidity, panic he couldn’t shake. A walk with Marco, a talk with Marco, a bargain made. A plate of cookies flavored with citrus apology and--and sleeping and waking and now.

Keith watched him. His eyes--no, they were fine. Normal, dark, following Lance’s every move.

Lance hooked his hands in the front of Keith’s shirt. But it wasn’t Keith’s. It was Marco’s. Lance’s head spun.

Keith laid his hands over Lance’s. His skin was cold. “Lance? Hey. . .hey, look at me?”

He couldn’t feel it, the burns against Keith’s back. His back. Their backs. He sucked in a breath and pulled hard at Keith’s shirt. Lance wanted to tear it to shreds. “Take this off,” he practically shouted it without meaning to. “I need you to take this off--” His hands started to shake. He couldn’t feel it, but he had to be sure. He couldn’t be sure unless he saw it for himself. He pulled at the shirt again, tears springing in his eyes. “Keith,  _ please _ \--”

Keith leaned back and did what Lance asked. Maybe he knew the reason why. Maybe he only did it because Lance wanted it. Maybe he felt the way he was shaking. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So many maybes.

The lamplight washed over Keith’s naked back. Lance ran his hands against it, disbelieving.

He’d seen burns. Pink and black and awful.

He’d felt burns, scorching and terrible, against his own skin.

Nothing remained of them. Keith’s skin was smooth under his hands, pale, perfect. His one shoulder still wore its scar, a blush of striped pink. The pattern of his moles hadn’t changed. Lance recognized their constellations as easily as the ones stuck above him with blue sticky tac.

Lance pressed his face where his hands had been, where they were still, and broke apart in a different way. With sobs and tears and every thankful fiber of his being.

Keith tensed, his muscles moved in the softest way possible under Lance’s cheek. “I’m okay, Lance,” he said, like it needed said now, with all the evidence exposed. “I’m okay.”

What did that mean? How could he possibly be? He may be healed, but Lance’s entire family knew Keith’s secret now. Had they said something? Would they? How many thought like Marco and accepted it? How many sided with Rachel?

Lance didn’t have answers, only his useless, loud, wet sobs and his endless tears.

Keith couldn’t bear it. Lance knew it before he grabbed his face, knew it as Keith swiped away the dampness on his cheeks. He knew it like he knew Keith wanted to kiss him before he kissed him, and how it wasn’t enough even when Lance kissed him back.

“I’m okay,” Keith breathed it across Lance’s mouth, each word a new kiss. “ You saw. I’m not hurt. I’m okay.”

Lance shook his head. “I  _ saw you _ , on--on the table, you were--you--you--”

He couldn’t get it out.

He couldn’t say,  _ you did the same thing your dad did _ .

It tore him apart that he thought it.

Keith grabbed his wrist and tugged one of Lance’s hands forward, cradled it over the rapid beat of his heart. Pain reached out and touched Lance’s fingertips, a misery Lance caused now, with his hiccuping and his wet eyes. Lance curled his fingers. Keith held on.

“I’m right here, and I’m not hurt. I wouldn’t lie to you.” Keith’s fingers tightened around Lance’s wrist. “You can feel that, can’t you?”

Lance felt a lot of things and it got him in a lot of trouble. The rest of his family, they must be sleeping, somehow. All Lance could sense was right in front of him and holding onto him.

And he felt. . .

Lance screwed up his face. When he blinked, fresh tears slipped down his cheeks. Keith’s heart raged, aching, because he caused them, because he couldn’t stop them from coming.

Keith, since the start, caught like knots under Lance’s fingers. It took time to sort through every string, examine it and understand the root of where it came from. All of his anger started in the same spot. All of his grief. Lance knew the place inside of him where he’d planted his self-hatred and why it’d grown so large.

Slowly, over time, through the months they spent together, Lance felt those knots unravel. A few days ago, while they sat on Keith’s bed, they all came undone. The bad things still existed--the roots were too deeply sunk in his heart to fully disappear--but better things started flourishing alongside them. Happiness. Comfort.

Lance opened his palm.

Affection can grow in any type of soil, given enough time and attention, and the right type of seeds. It twined over his fingers, vine-like, strong and resilient. Old things. New things. Things brought back to life.

Keith ducked forward. Their foreheads touched. “You believe me, don’t you?”

He wasn’t asking about the burns, the things Lance worried about before.

Lance closed his eyes and let the warmth Keith felt pour over him like water. It helped wash away his fears. 

“Yes,” he said, and he grabbed Keith’s other hand, pressing it over his own heart.

Keith couldn’t see inside him the same way Lance could. 

It didn’t matter. 

The meaning was clear, just from that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I can't express enough how much all your kudos and comments mean to me! I look forward to posting up a new chapter just to read all of your guys' speculations and comments you send my way <3 I'm grateful for every one of you!


	18. Chapter 18

For the next two days, Nadia locked herself up in her shared room with Sylvio. She didn’t speak, she didn’t eat. Probably didn’t sleep. Lance wondered what nightmares touched her when she tried.

He visited her like the rest of the family, the rare moments the door opened under his hand. Unlike them, he sat quietly by her side, wrestling with his own memories of that night. There was a lot to sort through, things he couldn’t clearly remember how they happened. He blamed the cookies, their deception still sour in his mouth.

They colored the mornings away in Nadia’s coloring books, played games of checkers through the afternoons, anything to dull the thoughts that hit them. Every now and then, Lance felt her seize up inside, heart stammering, stomach clenching, and he would place a comforting hand on hers and whisk it away. Sometimes he wasn’t fast enough. Sometimes the edges of the coloring books curled and smoked. Sometimes Nadia snatched her hand back before she burned him too.

Their  _ abuela _ held a family conference that Friday morning, woke everyone herself. By ones and twos, they all crowded in the dining room. Luis and their father sipped at strong, black coffee and stared silently out at the brightening sky. Their mother whipped up a quick, simple meal of toast and biscuits--no fresh egg omelets today. Lance dotted the table with jam and jelly and honey for her when she asked, and refused to touch any himself. Rachel and Veronica didn’t eat or drink anything. Marco wouldn’t look Lance’s way.

Nadia sat beside her bleary-eyed brother and kept her head down, her fisted hands hidden on her lap.

Lisa stared hard at one of the walls like she couldn’t quite convince herself she was actually awake.

To be fair, it did all feel like a bad dream.

Lance couldn’t shake it. He woke up, the second time, with Keith curled around him, their legs tangled and hands clutching at one another in sleep, and he didn’t understand why he wanted to cry when he saw Keith’s peaceful face. Then his  _ abuela _ showed up and, without meaning to, she pulled in all the things Lance tried to keep shoved behind the closed door. 

Morning peeked periwinkle and rose through the kitchen curtains. Lance remembered that specifically. Clear mornings meant Keith would either stay late or leave early. Given what happened the night before, Lance didn’t know then which he’d pick. He didn’t know which would be better for either of them.

“We need to talk about what happened last night. What it means, for you, specifically,  _ chiquita _ ,” their  _ abuela _ said, speaking softly, kindly, things she was inside and out.

Their  _ abuela _ mapped out the history of their family magic, where it stemmed and grew from, named their Cuban ancestors rich with tradition and skills otherworldly.  _ Gifts _ , she called them, as if to disguise the ash outside, graying the yard. Because even fire could be a gift, if used correctly, if understood and treated with respect.

Lance watched Nadia the entire time. He wasn’t the only one, but he studied her differently than the others except, maybe, Rachel. The two went together. The mind and the heart. And both Nadia’s mind and heart were black with fear. Learning this was something she’d been born into didn’t cast it out--it deepened it like the charcoal ring marking where the chicken coop once stood outside.

From his seat across the table, Lance tried his best to calm it. But without the connection of touch, his attempts fell short. Nadia kept her chin tucked towards her chest and her glassy eyes set forward, staring intensely at the same spot on the table, none the wiser.

Their  _ abuela _ once said fire magic wasn’t one to be taken lightly. The dead chickens in the yard told the sickening truth of that. The haunt of smoke in the air. 

Lance couldn’t blame Nadia for keeping her silence. Out of all the gifts in the family, hers was vastly different, developed suddenly and with consequence. It sprung from her fingertips, came to life in her hands. Or something like that. Luis and Sylvio were the only two that’d seen her use her magic fully. 

One touch and the coop erupted in fire.

One touch and Keith’s shirt melted to his back, singed the tips of his hair away.

Nadia blamed herself. Lance read it clearest out of anything else she felt. Her guilt twisted in her heart, weighed her shoulders down. Lance watched her scratch her crayons across the brown-edged pages of her books, her small body tucked in as tightly to herself as possible. If she slept, she might feel better. If she dared to eat, the magic in the food might do what Lance couldn’t and heal her.

As he watched, one of the crayons started melting, the liquid line of orange smearing from one edge of the page to the next, dripping out of Nadia’s hand. The paper label clung to her fingertips.

Lance started connecting the dots early on: The worse Nadia felt, the more her magic manifested. Her heart was a heavy thing inside her, dropping lower and hurting worse each time she did the smallest thing. It might not have been true fire, flickering flames or more than a wisp of smoke now and then, but it shot electric terror through her every time.

He tried again to pull it away. A touch to her warm hand, and Nadia glanced up. They shared a look--one calm and forgiving, the other teary and wide.

Nadia breathed out a heavy breath. Her heart slowed. The crayon hardened on the paper, the places it stuck to her skin.

She slapped the coloring book to the floor, dashed it to the hardwood along with the capsized checkerboard, and crawled over into Lance lap.

Her tears burned when they fell against Lance’s neck, hot as boiling water. He closed his eyes against the pain and held her, even when they fell harder, soaking through his shirt and scalding his throat.

And here, like this, hurting and healing, rocking his niece gently in his arms, Lance broke the silence.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” he promised her. After all the long hours of not speaking, the sound of his own voice startled him. It expanded inside the small room, ballooning out, until there was nothing else. “It’ll take time, but you’ll get it.  _ I’m _ still learning, did you know? Sometimes I mess up too. And it’s okay. It’s okay. No one blames you, Nadia, no one. Not your  _ mamá _ or your  _ papá _ or Sylvio. Not  _ abuela _ , not  _ abuelo _ , not me, not Keith.”

Nadia’s tears ran beneath his shirt.

He’d check after he’d leave the room and find red lines drawn against his chest, tattletale rivers of blistered skin.

She didn’t say anything. 

Lance kept on.

“It’s scary. The other night was scary. But everyone is okay. You’re fine, Sylvio’s fine, Keith’s fine. We’re all okay.” Lance swallowed, refused to think of how it almost wasn't. He thought of after, his hands on Keith’s healed skin, and the relief of seeing Nadia and Sylvio in the house, dirty and shaking-scared, but fine. “All of us are okay. Well. . .almost, right?” 

Lance rubbed his hand down Nadia’s back. Her body radiated heat. “You're hurting inside.”

Nadia sniffed. She tucked closer, face hidden. Lance felt everything she did; his eyes shone, and his throat went tight, and he shouldered her pain as his own, as much as she let him have.

“Will you talk to me,” he asked.

The day was well on its way to evening, all the windows in the room colored like the melted, orange wax. Scents crept up from dinner cooking downstairs--a roast, maybe, some hardy, feel-good stew. They’d spent the day holed up in the room together, shuffling through all the distractions Nadia inevitably shoved to the floor. Her coloring books held scars of her fingers, from her hands. The checkerboard was now melted on one side, the vinyl paint distressed and peeling away. Nadia’s comforter gained several, black-ringed holes; her pillowcase had to be thrown out. Small burns for big worries.

Sylvio hadn’t come into the room once since Thanksgiving. Lance felt the burden he carried--his bone-deep terror, the concern for Nadia, his own warring guilt--like a ghost, wandering with him through the halls. Between him and Nadia, Lance was torn where to go. He wasn’t two people, three, or four. He couldn’t tear himself apart and be in every place he needed to be.

Rachel stayed with their nephew, offering the same things Lance did for Nadia. Be there in case they wanted to talk, be there when they wouldn’t, comfort them regardless. They were scared. They didn’t understand. They were kids.

Small hands pushed against Lance’s chest.

Nadia rocked back, her chin tucked low, eyes focused on some other part of the room. Her emotions flared and flickered--Lance read them like a soothsayer might read twirling flames on candle wicks. Fitting. Ironic. Bright and beautiful and glowing with hurt.

Nadia opened her mouth, then snapped it shut.

Lance saw the smoke rise from his shirt before he felt the heat touching his skin.

Practice makes perfect, and practicing keeping his expression calm came in handy now.

He grabbed her by the wrists and slowly moved her hands away. Nadia jerked them back to herself, snapped them into tight, unforgiving fists. She clambored down, to the floor, the final thing she could cast off the bed.

More than ever, Lance wished he knew how the magic worked. Hers, his own. If he knew the proper way to heal, this might go better. 

“It’s okay,” Lance told her again. He planted his feet on the floor too, watched her intently, and tried-- _ tried _ \--to project that out for her to feel. His love for her. His acceptance. Every good thing he felt towards her that might sink in and calm the wild-fire ruin Nadia carried inside. “. . .can I tell you something?”

Nadia, in the process of scrubbing her eyes dry on her arm, paused and looked at him. Her arm fell to her side. She nodded.

Like he reminded Keith over and over anytime his doubt started rising, Lance said, “You’re still you, Nadia. You’re still my little niece. Nothing changes that.”

Not the fire from the other night. Not the burns collected at his collarbone now. Nothing.

Her caramel eyes swelled with more tears.

Lance held his hands out towards her, unafraid.

And he waited. 

Waited on Nadia to speak or to move or to surrender her hands into his. And, while he did, he watched and felt and used his own magic the best ways he knew how.

Orange turned bronze in the window panes. Dinner finished. Their family milled from their rooms, walked past the closed door, some paused, some didn’t. Lance knew who did and who walked downstairs.

Nadia watched the door too, her face expectant, hopeful. Sunlight flickering through broken clouds, that’s what Lance imagined. 

Eventually, the noises died down. Eventually, Nadia’s hope blanketed itself in more self-doubt.

Eventually, she spun on her toes and came to him. Her small hands grabbed his, and she pressed herself into the hug Lance had waiting.

It burned to hold her.

Lance didn’t let go.

“Mama hates me.”

Nadia’s tiny voice speared through him, hit him dead-center, the point of her upset striking against his own, thudding heart.

Lance squeezed her tighter. “She doesn’t hate you. Why do you think she hates you?”

Lisa knew about their bloodline longer than Lance had. She wed into it, gave children to it, and lived in a crowded household of it. Not once did Lance sense that it bothered her. Granted, that was before Thanksgiving night. Since then, Lance tuned into Nadia and Sylvio, worried more about their small, anxious hearts than anyone else in the house.

And, true, Lance hadn’t seen Lisa much afterward. He assumed she stayed with Rachel and Sylvio, doing what Lance was doing now. Luis was the one who visited Nadia, second to Lance, who stayed with her most of the day. He was best suited for it with his empathy--and, despite that, he’d be here anyway, gifted or giftless.

Voice wet, Nadia murmured, “Because I scared everyone. Because I almost hurt Sylvio even though I didn’t mean to. I didn’t  _ mean _ to,  _ Tío _ , I didn’t, I  _ promise _ \--”

Lance crumbled beneath the weight of her misery.

He dropped her hands and curled both arms around her, pulling her into him, tight and close. If she set his shirt on fire, he wouldn’t have dropped her even then. “I know, sweetheart, I know. We all know that.”

“I want my mama.” Her tears hit his skin again. Lance didn’t flinch at the pain, but did when Nadia repeated herself, words tangled up in sobs, “ _ I want my mama. _ ”

Lance let her go. Nadia shuffled back, rubbing harshly at her eyes, soft hiccups jerking up her shoulders.

“Then we’ll go get your mama,” Lance promised. He was steel and determination and anger molded in the shape of his arms and legs and blue eyes. “We’ll go get her right now.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The smells from the dining room sent Lance’s stomach lurching. It growled and cramped, begging and sick. Lance pushed his hand against it, grit his teeth, and ignored it like he ignored the looks directed at him when he stepped into the room.

His mother got to her feet. The pleasure at seeing him there, mistakenly thinking he was joining them, made Lance feel worse. “You’re eating with us,” she asked.

Lance tried to keep his face passive. “Not hungry,” he lied, quickly, not very convincingly.

Rachel winced and set down her fork. “Lance--”

He didn’t have time to get into it with anyone else. There was a scared little girl upstairs crying her eyes out for her mom, and Lance had made a promise to get her. He kept his promises. He turned towards his aunt, opened up towards her--

\--and recoiled at what he felt, pinched in the spaces between her heartbeats.

Lance slapped his hand on the table, hard enough Lisa’s plate bounced. “Nadia wants you,” he said. His tone dripped acid. “She’s upstairs, crying for you.”

Lisa looked up at him, startled, but it was Luis, leaning around her, who spoke, “She’s talking? She talked to you?”

There was only love there. Love and relief. Luis pushed back his chair, his silverware hastily dropped, napkin thrown. He was up before Lance could say, “She wants her mama. That’s what’s she’s saying. She wants  _ you _ .”

Sylvio slipped out of his chair. No one stopped him from running out of the room. His heavy feet pounded up the stairs, and they all correctly guessed where he headed off to. Luis began to follow. He dropped a hand to his wife’s shoulder.

“You heard what Lance said. Nadia asked for you.”

Their emotions confessed secrets Lance didn’t want to know, forced him to feel things he didn’t want to feel. Each second shifting through them made Lance want to hurl his hands against the table and scream.

In fact, when Lisa didn’t immediately get up, he did.

“Are you  _ serious _ ? She’s your  _ daughter _ ! Get the hell up there and  _ talk to her _ !”

His mother wheeled on him. “ _ Lance _ !”

Veronica shared a look with Rachel, who nodded, her face pale and sickened. So she heard it in her own way, these same, awful things. Probably worse. Thoughts were arranged in pictures and words, way more articulated than any of the feelings Lance read.

From the end of the table, Marco piped up, “What’s going on?”

Lisa looked mortified. Strung-up and caught. A fly in a web full of starved spiders. At least it got her to her feet. She stepped towards the open archway, just once, staring up at the ceiling, past it, mouth set. Luis caught her hand and tugged.

“Lisa.”

“I know it’s wrong to be afraid,” Lisa said, finally. She dropped her gaze to Luis first, then snapped it over to Lance. “But you saw what she did. There’s nothing left of the coop. What if they hadn’t gotten away in time? What if she did the same thing to them?” She trailed off. Lifted her eyes again. They were wet. “What if she still does?”

Veronica answered her, “She won’t.”

Lisa scoffed. The ugly things living inside of her started to come out. “And I can believe you? You didn’t see this happening! Didn’t warn anyone! Can we really trust you--”

“Lisa, don’t,” Luis warned. “I told you how it works.”

V folded her arms. It was meant to offend her, what Lisa said, but it fell off the mark. She wasn’t bothered in the slightest. “Nadia marries in her twenties,” she said cooly. “And nearly every single one of us here attends the ceremony.”

“ _ Nearly _ ,” Lisa spat the word back out.

Veronica glanced to where their  _ abuela _ sat, solemnly, hands folded over her dinner plate, at her usual spot at the head of the table. She didn’t have to say anything else.

“I didn’t expect to be,” their  _ abuela _ said, unperturbed. She continued eating from her bowl of stew like this was just another night, another jovial discussion over dinner. “Shame I won’t, though.”

Lisa’s face drained of color. Marco sank back in his chair, a hand pressed to his mouth by the knuckles. Rachel stared at their  _ abuela _ with new eyes, her shoulders tense under her sweater. Luis pulled his hand away. He looked angry, but Lance knew it was a cover for the premature grief seeded now in his heart.

He wasn’t the only one who watched Luis leave the room, nor was he the only one that felt the tension stretch taut. 

Pale and shaking, Lisa glanced back at the rest of the family, and soon found no one would meet her eye. Diego chewed on his own teeth. Rachel scowled towards her barely-touched plate. Veronica continued to gaze toward their  _ abuela _ , brow twisted, battling down her guilt at confessing things she had no right to confess.

Lance leaned back from the table. 

His mother walked over, past him, past her children’s curious stares, and snagged Lisa by the elbow. “Let’s go,  _ mija _ . You heard what Lance said.”

Lisa blinked dully. Was it magic? Or her own shock at processing through what Veronica foretold? Lance withdrew his own gift from her. He couldn’t stomach it any longer.

He followed them up to Nadia’s room, but diverged from there, heading for his own bedroom at the end of the hall. Hungry and tired, the burned places of him bright red and sore, Lance fell back on his bed and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Colored stars popped under his eyelids. He stopped only when it started to hurt.

Lance didn’t want to be here, in this house, in this room, on this bed. The past few days had their toll on him, took more than they gave back. He wanted to stay for Nadia, give her the comfort she needed and deserved. Now he wanted to punch his aunt in the face, and came close to it.

Lisa didn’t lie when she said she was scared. It darkened her heart--Lance knew it. And he knew the rest it tried to hide: obvious distrust, not-so-obvious revulsion.

It translated to this: Magic and gifts were fine, accepted, maybe ignored, if they were quiet and hidden. Mind gifts, speaking gifts, healing gifts. Nadia’s didn’t fall within the same, small circle. Fire cast light--it burned and it consumed and it grew. It lived as much inside her as it could outside of her. It was hard to ignore, harder to accept.

For Lance, acceptance was easiest to give. Nadia was still Nadia. Keith was still Keith. They were people he loved who stood a little apart from the rest of the world, new cuts to the same cloth. 

Forgiveness? Not so much. He thought of Nadia sobbing in her room, and of Lisa at the table, eating her dinner like nothing was amiss. Lance ground his teeth at it.

Laying there, frowning up at his glow-in-the-dark stars like they were at fault, Lance groped his phone out of his pocket. His thumbs glided over the bright screen, punching out a message to his friends.

Their replies buzzed against his palms, Hunk’s and Pidge’s answers appearing in their little, blue bubbles. Tomorrow, they agreed. They’d join Lance tomorrow at Pidge’s and waste their Sunday away they best way they knew how: Together.

_ Can I bring Keith _ , he text next, barely waiting.

His phone  _ ping _ ed and vibrated again.

Hunk said,  _ Sure, it’ll be a party! _

And Pidge replied,  _ I’ll ask Allura, too _ . 

Lance smiled though there wasn’t anyone around to see it.

He wasn’t religious, not in the same way his family liked to be, in-house and bowed over soft-backed books. His church was split between houses, his congregation in the clutch of his friends, his Bible a playlist of songs he played during hard times. He wasn’t religious, no, but Lance prayed right then, to his plastic stars and whatever beyond them that might be listening, for clouds and rain and weather Keith could venture outside in. He prayed for Nadia, for her broken, weary heart. He prayed for Lisa and Luis and Sylvio. He prayed like it was another type of healing he didn’t have the knack for yet--with reckless, hopeful abandon for any ounce of good it could bring.

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


God, as it turned out, had ears turned towards Lance that night.

When he woke up early the next morning, before he’d even scrubbed the sleep-dust from the corners of his eyes, Lance peeled back the blankets covering the window.

Rain hit the glass. The sky stretched on for miles in a deep gray blanket. Eight in the morning looked like five in the afternoon, costumed in endless twilight.

He confirmed it on his phone, three separate weather sites later: Rain showers for the next three days, cloudy skies to close the week.

An almost-miracle.

A prayer, answered.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Try as he might to be quiet and quick, Lance got caught creeping past the kitchen towards the front door. 

His mother filled the doorway in her swirling skirts--hand-stitched beauties of layered maroon and butter yellow. She held a mug of coffee. Lance smelled its warm aroma with longing.

“Lance?” 

It was all she had to say. Lance paused on his feet and turned to give her his attention, his bag knocking against his leg when he did.

“¿ _ Sí, mamá _ ?” He read the bright font curling around the mug and recognized it as one he’d given her for Mother’s Day, years back. Fondness touched his heart. Some of his own distrust crumbled.

He was really,  _ really _ sick of fighting with his family.

“Are you heading out,” she asked. It was a filler question, meant to delay.

Lance answered her honestly, as if his change of clothes and the bag slung over his shoulders wasn’t enough to go by. “Yeah. Pidge is in. Me and Hunk and maybe Keith and Allura are going over to his house for a bit. Maybe into town. We haven’t really decided.”

She nodded, sipped at her coffee. Her eyes were tired. Actually,  _ all _ of her looked tired. Lance couldn’t place when that’d started or if it was new--he’d been avoiding her for days, skipped meals and stayed up in Nadia’s room, sharing apples and bananas he stole from the kitchen between them.

“Do you want breakfast before you go?”

The word  _ no _ hit his teeth almost immediately.

He gulped it down with a deep inhale, hands scrubbing at the back of his neck.  _ Don’t fight _ , he begged himself,  _ Don’t be like that _ .

With a sigh, Lance dropped his bag by the door. He felt her hope hatch like little, golden eggs.

“I. . .we need to talk. About the other night.” Lance didn’t know what to do with his hands. They felt like dead weight at his wrists, his arms heavy in their sockets. Nerves. He was nervous. “The cookies--”

Saying it out loud made it sound stupid. Maybe he’d imagined it all. Maybe he’d been so exhausted and worn thin that the softest touch of his mother’s healing had sent him to sleep. Maybe she hadn’t magicked them to make him tired at all.

But then Lance felt her little clutch of eggs disappear, replaced with a tight pinching around her heart. And he thought,  _ Oh. I guess wasn’t wrong _ .

His mother fidgeted with the rim of her mug, eyes cast down, studying the lazy curl of steam. “. . .You didn’t see yourself from the outside, Lance. You were barely coherent. We kept trying to talk to you, and you didn’t hear any of it, did you?”

She glanced up. Lance frowned, searching inside his own head, and found only scraps to offer her back.

“. . .a little. I remember a little of it.” Rachel, mostly, which made sense. She probably worked her own gift on him, pushed away some of his thoughts to clear a way for her to be heard. Other than that, Lance remembered that night in flashes and still images. He was outside and he was inside and he was outside again; he was sobbing and hurting, talking to Marco and, finally, seated on the couch, sugar filling his cheeks. Like that: a string of Polaroid pictures, blackened by fire and mostly out of focus.

His mother nodded like she expected that much and only that much. “Come here and sit with me.” 

She went to the table, and Lance followed, plopping down in a chair across from her. The oven warmed the room comically hot, and perfumed the air with the flakey, buttery smell of baking biscuits. Lance’s mouth watered. His stomach squeezed itself into a fist.

There were similarities in their gifts. His mother took one look at him and knew what he’d been feeling. She sensed his hunger, the rolling ache in his stomach. Before she sat, she fetched another mug of coffee and pressed this one into Lance’s hands.

It was a temptation he almost caved to.

He dropped the mug to the table and his hands into his lap. “You made me fall asleep, didn’t you,” he asked the coffee mug, speaking to the grating noise of chair legs scraping against the floor.

If she lied, he’d know it. If she told the truth, he’d know it too. Lance refused to look at her now that they were both seated; he was scared of what type of pity-filled or sorry look he’d find wearing his mother’s face.

There came silence. Drowsy songbirds lullabied in distant trees. A single, lonely rooster call sounded near the back window.

Then, “I did.”

Lance would have preferred a lie.

“So you can do that? That’s--that’s part of it?”

A crow rasped out its smoker’s cough. The poor rooster kept singing up the sun all by itself.

From the corner of his eye, Lance watched another coffee mug join the table.

“It’s. . .not exactly like that,” he heard her say. “You’re thinking I forced you. It’s why you won’t eat, I know. But I can’t force anything--I encourage. Wounds to heal, bones to stop aching. . .sleep to come. Whatever it is that’s needed, and at the time, you needed to sleep,  _ mijo _ .”

Lance finally looked up at her. “I  _ needed _ to see Keith.”

She drew in a breath, one that swelled and hung in her lungs for several seconds before she pushed it past her lips. “I know,” she told him, gentle as her flushing regret. “And I tried. You may not believe me, but that’s all I wanted, it’s all I ever want for my babies, is for them to feel better.” Her hand came forward, folded over Lance’s knee. “At the time, it was all I could think to do.”

He waited, but it was just a touch. A simple, normal touch.

“So--so that’s it? It was a mistake?” Lance starved for two days, lived off things he plucked from the kitchen cabinets and the hanging fruit baskets, things he was sure his mother didn’t handle. “An accident?”

“It was what you needed,” she said again. Her hand fell away. Her shame, for hurting him, did not.

These gifts and their rules. Were they locked in place, born into them like the magic, or did they develop over time? Lance was starting to wonder--or maybe he was starting realize--these things weren’t exactly absolute.

Honestly, was he any better? Lance ripped and tore at people’s feelings, absorbed them. It was done in the same name-- _ healing _ . To make people feel better. Wasn’t that exactly what his mother had tried to do, in her own way?

Lance was one, giant hypocrite.

He sank back in his chair. The timer buzzed on the oven, and pulled his mother to her feet. Lance turned his head, watching her quietly, crossing his arms.

When she returned, she held a plate of biscuits out to him. Fresh butter glossed their golden-brown crowns. She held wildflower honey in her other hand, his favorite. Was it another try at an apology? Or just habit?

The warm, salty smell wafting from the plate made Lance want to cry.

But he looked away, rubbed his palms against his legs to staunch the desire to grab one. His knee bounced under his hands.

“They’re fine. I didn’t do anything to them,” she tried, and Lance shook his head.

“It’s not that,” he said, though, yes, it was, just a little. “I have a question.” She watched him back, and Lance stumbled on, “Is it possible--do you  _ think _ it’s possible you can teach me? To heal. Like, actually,  _ actually _ heal people? I mean, emotionally. Obviously.”

She blinked her gray eyes at him. Her soft surprise turned into pride. “I think we could work on it. I think you’re still just touching the surface of the things you can do.”

He’d never told her before, about the way he stole Keith’s self-hate and anger, how he fed them into the soil, the grass, the tree, the stormy air. But he could  _ now _ , because everyone knew what Keith was and why he hated himself for it so much. He could tell them that it wasn’t the first time. That it was the only way he understood  _ how _ .

Lance’s question ended up knocking an entire avalanche out of him. Once he started talking, explaining, telling her things about his magic he didn’t fully understand, Lance couldn’t stop.

While he did, his dad wandered into the room, and he leaned against the counter, eating biscuits straight from the pan, listening quietly to what Lance said. Marco and Rachel, too. They brought their plates to the table, sat down, armed with butter knives and two different types of jam.

And when he was through, Lance’s body sagged like his shoulders lost a great weight. He hated keeping secrets. He hated fighting and pushing his family away. He hated feeling like his mother had tried to do something awful, when she’d only tried to calm his scattered gift and mind and heart. He hated that he’d done the same thing and took all this time to realize it.

His mother grabbed his hands. Behind him, Lance heard worn boots scuff against the floor, and the gentle pressure of his dad’s hand fell against the top of his head. Marco breathed easier, his emotions unclenching, unfurling like a garden in spring. Rachel kicked him under the table; Lance fought not to wear her smile as his own.

“Oh,  _ cariño _ ,” his mother breathed. “You are incredible, don’t you know?”

Lance lifted a shoulder. “I guess.”

“When you get back, we’ll start. I’ll tell you everything I know.” She smiled at him, and this time, when she pushed the plate closer, Lance gave in and finally ate. 

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Keith’s place was stop number one.

Shiro answered Lance’s knocking almost immediately.

“Lance,” he asked, though he didn’t sound--or feel--particularly surprised to see him standing there, dripping water all over the welcome mat. “What’re you up to so early?”

‘Early’ meaning just after ten. Talking and eating with his family set Lance back a little further than he originally planned, but honestly? It was worth it. He even got to say goodbye to Nadia and Sylvio, the two of them trailing downstairs as Lance was getting up to leave. They both hugged him tight, and Lance was exceptionally pleased that Nadia didn’t singe his clothes, not one bit.

“Pidge is back in town and we’re all getting together,” Lance explained. “Wanted to see if Keith wanted to tag along.”

Shiro's smile filled his face with sweetness. “If you want to try to get him up. Warning, though, he sleeps like the dead.”

Lance laughed and stepped inside, quickly kicking off his shoes. He dropped his bag down by them, avoiding the water he'd tracked in, and as he turned to head down the hall, Shiro grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Hold on. Before you do that. . .can I ask you something?”

“Uh, sure?” Lance glanced uncertainly towards Keith's room, then back, studying Shiro's face. Everything was gentle concern, nothing new. “What's up?”

Shiro, too, looked down the hall, and held his gaze there for a few, long seconds. “I'm worried about him. Is he okay?” They stood close, so when Shiro looked back, Lance could see every shade of black that colored his eyes, as variant as Keith's. “I don't think he's been eating much. . .but when I try to talk to him about it, he avoids the question.”

_ Ah _ .

Lance bit his lip. Stopped. Calmed his expression. It was easy to forget Keith kept his secrets tightly held, that once upon a time, Lance was the only one who knew what Keith was.

“I'll ask. Maybe he'll talk to me,” was all he said, avoiding the question too.

It was, thankfully, enough. Shiro dropped his hand.

“One more thing.”

Lance gave Shiro a quizzical look, but when he gestured for him to follow, Lance did without hesitation. At first, it seemed like Shiro was taking them to Keith's room afterall. They headed down the hallway, Shiro quiet, Lance watching his back. But he didn't reach for Keith's bedroom door--he reached for his own.

Every small glance inside didn't do the place any justice. Though the walls were white, Shiro took a careful amount of time placing family photos up to cover the bleak paint job. There were numerous ones of a smiling, younger Keith, a few of their dad, a couple of Shiro himself. And among them, a woman Lance didn't recognize. By the soft way she aged with Shiro through the pictures, Lance assumed he was finally seeing Shiro's mom. In another, she stood beside Texas Kogane, colored in the vibrant sepia-overlay of the 70s, and that confirmed his suspicions.

Lance never expected Shiro to have posters. They were pinned to the closet doors, memorabilia from an old 80s cartoon, the brightest splashes of color in the room. If multiple figurines of the same, robotic lions weren’t scattered on Shiro's desk, Lance would've chalked it up appreciating the aesthetic.

A few potted ferns craned for the sun's attention beside the window, the table they sat on full of more frames. Embraced in each wooden border, Shiro appeared again, beaming, standing, or sitting beside Adam. In one closest to the bed, tilted at a specific angle to be seen, the two stood clasping hands, their matching rings glittering silver and gold. Their suits looked sharp--Shiro dressed in black, Adam in pristine white. Streaks of incense ash dirtied the tabletop.

Lance stumbled.

Shiro glanced at him and followed his gaze to the same photograph. Mourning slid up Lance's back. Love--as deep and sudden as Indigo Pull's summer floods--filled his chest. 

“Our engagement photo,” Shiro explained. “Adam insisted we wait to take them when our suits came in. He said it would ‘be a better memory’ that way.” 

Shiro snagged the photo off the table. He held it gently, a lover holding hands with who they cherished most. The soft look on his face, the warmth inside him reaching from throat to stomach, made Lance think of Keith.

Unprompted, Shiro held it out towards Lance.

Lance took it. 

He may have imagined it, but the sense of pure, molten happiness knocked against the glass. The smiles on Shiro's and Adam's faces radiated it out like sunlight, so that was probably why. 

It certainly wasn't his own. Or Shiro's now. Keith slept still, his emotions blurred from dreaming.

With shaking fingers, Lance passed the photo back. “You guys look nice,” he said, hushed.

Shiro frowned. He misunderstood. “It's okay. I didn't think it'd get better, I'll be honest. But it has. A little, and a little more than that every day.” He set the frame in the exact place he had it before, angled and all, a late night comfort or an early morning greeting. “Don't tell him, but living with Keith again helps. A lot. We've always been close, and I know last year was hard on him, but he just. . .”

Here, words failed him. New sorrow bubbled up, old regret staking claim over the memory of lost love. 

Lance blinked back tears, willed them away before they were seen brightening his eyes.

Shiro gave a little laugh. “Listen to me go on. Sorry about that.” 

“You don't have to be sorry, Shiro,” Lance said. He touched Shiro's shoulder, by his fingertips. Instinctively, he started opening up, becoming a vessel for that grief to flow into. The tears stubbornly stayed. “I understand. And, if you need someone to talk to, I might not be much, but I have ears. Good ones.”

He pulled his hand away. The connection he forged snapped, brittle, gossamer thread. Shiro's grief remained his own once more.

Shiro laughed, relaxed a little inside. “I'll keep that in mind. Thank you.”

Honesty was the best feeling in the world, second only to love.

“While I'm at it, here.” Shiro passed Lance a small fold of bills, discreetly taken from a wallet Lance didn't remember Shiro picking up. “If you end up going somewhere, get Keith something nice. Something he wants. Everytime I offer him money, he refuses.”

Lance didn't count it, didn't glance at it again. He tucked it in his back pocket, beside his own malnourished wallet, and promised the easiest promise he'd ever made, “You got it.”

Shiro's smile escorted Lance out the door.

Keith's room, expectantly, was pitch black. The curtains, layered three or four times over the window, canceled out any of the meager light the rainclouds allowed. Lance sensed good dreams and heard Keith breathe, deeply, softly, a song he knew from the nights Keith spent over. In a few steps, Lance joined him on the bed, hands snaking into the blanket cocoon, reaching for him.

His fingers grazed cool skin. Soft hair. The intricate pattern of his ear. He drew lower, over sharp cheekbones and jaw, to fuller places--the apples in his cheeks, his lips.

Silently, Lance sucked in a breath. 

Gently as possible, he coaxed the blanket down, past the messy crown of Keith’s head, his face and chin and throat. Keith didn't move, didn't wake.

Seeing him, peaceful, the softest curl of a smile on his mouth, made Lance ache. Ache with longing, like he missed him, even though Keith was under his hands, and within a few, fast seconds, under the tiny presses of his mouth.

Thanksgiving had been three days ago. Three long,  _ long _ days.

“Keith. . .” His name was a whisper on his tongue, another kiss on his lips. “Keith, wake up.”

Keith didn't. Then again, Lance wasn't trying too hard.

Aware of the open door and of Shiro back in the kitchen, Lance crawled over Keith and stretched out firmly on top of him.

The tiniest groan hit the air, the smallest of shifts stirred under him--a roll of a shoulder, a leg flung out from where it'd been drawn up to his stomach.

Lance didn't have much experience feeling Keith wake up. He was either gone before Lance, or slept after Lance had to leave.

Today, he had a front row show.

Keith rolled over on his back, arms pulling free from the comforter. They curled around Lance's back automatically, his hands slipping under Lance's jacket, his shirt, sliding up the bumps of his spine. The shudder that rocked through them both was  _ delicious _ \--Lance had no other word to describe it.

And then--violet recognition, eyes open and wide and staring Lance down like he was some kind of unattainable dream. 

Every drowsy emotion became Lance's, every hazy wisp of happiness Keith held onto from sleeping, down to the bright rush of realizing that Lance really was there, laying on him, no trick of the imagination.

Somehow, it made kissing him taste that much sweeter.

“Lance?” Disbelief--in tone, inside. Keith's hands pressed down harder, nails daring to bite.

Lance kissed him again, holding his face between his palms, a new way to pray. 

“Yeah. I'm here. Get up,” Lance hummed. “Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey, or whatever.”

Keith chuckled sleepily against Lance's mouth. “I'm gonna tell you this really isn't the best way to wake me up.”

“Sure it is. You're awake, aren't you?”

“Mh, kinda. But how're you gonna get me out of bed like this?”

“Shiro’s home.” It was an attempt, all Lance could think of on the spot.

Keith closed his eyes. His lashes fluttered against the tops of his cheeks which was entirely unfair, if Lance had anything to say about it.

“Shut the door then.”

Lance flushed. The sad part was he actually considered it, glanced over at the open doorway and everything, weighed each choice.

If it hadn't been so late in the day, if Shiro wasn't home, if they didn’t have  _ plans _ , Lance might've relented and did what Keith suggested.

Instead, Lance crawled off of him, perching at the edge of the mattress. Keith opened his eyes again, and his brow twisted up at the length of distance between them.

Slowly, Keith pushed himself up, balanced on his hands. His exhaustion touched Lance now that he paid attention to it. Other things too, some good, some bad, all unsurprising. Lance expected worse.

Blearily, blinking at Lance, at an unfamiliar clock on his bedside table, Keith asked, “What time is it?”

Not,  _ why are you here? _ Not,  _ why'd you wake me up and not Shiro? _ Not,  _ kiss me again _ , though Lance felt the pull of that one particularly strong.

“About eleven.” Lance crossed his legs, squinting back at him. “. . .can I turn on a light? It's dark in here.”

“Yeah. You don't have to ask.”

“Don't I?” Lance cut on the light and shot Keith a suggestive grin--that abruptly fell. “Jesus. You look like hell.”

Black crescents pooled under Keith's eyes, in heavy contrast with the rest of his blanched face. His skin held a soft bluish cast, paler than Lance ever remembered it being, his veins blue and indigo and visible cording down his hands and arms. And gently, almost escaping his notice, Keith's entire body trembled as he moved up, kicking the blanket away from him with more force than necessary. 

“Thanks,” Keith told him in kind, without humor. “You look great yourself.”

Lance didn't have anything to say to that.

Aside from a pair of black boxer briefs and his tired expression, Keith wore nothing else. And while that was a private treat in itself, nothing compared to seeing Keith's back again, untouching by burns. 

Lance let out a breath. Keith glanced back. The air melted between them, softened by the looks they shared. Lance scooted forward exactly when Keith leaned back, expecting and receiving the sturdy, exploring press of Lance's hands.

Tears pinpricked in both their eyes.

“How are they,” Keith asked. The question shivered up Lance's back, stalled his hands.

“Fine. They're fine, thanks to you,” Lance breathed, taking the full force of Keith's relief alongside his own, tremendous gratitude.

Lance tucked his face against Keith's shoulder, blinking and blinking, gulping down these old, silly scares. It didn't matter, right? It didn't matter because Keith was okay. Their time apart didn't change that from being true. It was like he kept telling Nadia:  _ It’s okay. No one was hurt. _

Even so, Lance dusted his mouth across Keith's shoulders, thankful. Keith sighed, and not once did he complain while Lance took his time with this personal ceremony.

Hearing Shiro drop a cup or bowl in the sink, however, brought Lance back to himself.

Cheeks scarlet, Lance scrambled away, pushing off the bed like a scolded dog. He stood there, arms snapped at his sides, his entire body tense and straight. Keith blinked languidly at him, and smiled, slow and teasing.

“You never said why you're here,” Keith pointed out, promptly changing the subject. He went to his closet, picking an outfit out blindly--there wasn't much difference between what he had. All black shirts look the same. His one pair of joggers matched them all.

“Oh. Yeah. You're right.” Forgive the distractions, Lance supposed. And they'd been mostly good ones. Great ones. His eyes kept slipping over to watch Keith dress in naked appraisal. 

Keith jerked a shirt down over his head. His hair flipped out, a mess of tangles, and, God, if it didn't take everything in him not to walk over there and comb his hands through it. “. . .and?”

Lance made himself stare at a wall. When he spoke, it rushed out, all at once, words colliding into words, “You--you know, Pidge came in last night and I thought we should all get together--we as in Pidge and me and Hunk and maybe Allura and you, too, if you wanted, but you don't look so hot--well,  _ okay _ , maybe you  _ do _ , but that's not the point--”

“Lance. Breathe, please.”

He sucked in a breath. “Right. So. Do you want to?”

Keith glanced from him to the window. His jaw moved, subtly, and Lance rushed over whatever he was about to say, “You might need a coat. It's raining kittens out there.”

Keith's laugh was both of theirs. Lance bit his down while Keith's punched the air in one, loud hit. He said, “ _ Kittens _ ?” in beautiful bewilderment.

“Yeah! Like, ‘cats and dogs’ means it's pouring? So ‘kittens’ means it's sprinkling. You follow?”

Keith had the nerve to say, “Wherever you go.”

A grin hooked up one side of Lance's mouth. “Great! Grab a jacket and let's go.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Three blocks into Indigo Pull, while walking past one of the numerous heirloom antique shops clotting the downtown strip, Lance asked Keith blandly as he could, “Are you hungry?”

To a bystander, this was a normal question, especially between two teens in the middle of the afternoon.

The following, “Is that why you look so bad?” was almost as acceptable, but might raise a few, curious looks or eyebrows.

Lance pitched his voice low, a murmur fed into Keith’s keen hearing, for that purpose. The window displays on either side of them showcased odds-and-ends ranging from stacks of authentic Coca-Cola crates to refurbished bedroom sets to curious, blank-faced dolls hung on lattice work with near-invisible fishing line. These were shops Lance and Keith passed all their lives, and not much had changed in all those years. Christmastime might snake a few strands of colorful lights around the windows, like now, but usually,  _ mostly _ , it was the same crate towers and old furniture no one wanted, pretty new paint job or not.

The closer to noon it got, the more the plans between friends changed. No longer meeting at the Holt's, which was across town and up a slippery hill, Pidge suggested they all meet downtown. This changed, recently, for the group to head to the local thrift store instead, as Lance and Hunk agreed they both felt the itch and Allura expressed she’d been wanting to go.

Keith didn't particularly care where they went, and at every one of Lance's prompts, he agreed without much thought behind it.  _ Wherever you go _ , he'd said. Lance started to think he meant it.

They were heading for the thrift shop when Lance asked his questions. A light rain fell on their shoulders, streaked across the windows in chilly beads.

Keith made a face, a twisting frown, a knotted brow, unhappy inside and out. He didn't lie. There wasn't any point to it around Lance. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Regret clutched hotly at Keith's stomach. Like it was his fault for being hungry. Like he could help it. “But don't. . .don't worry about it. I'll be okay.”

It didn't  _ feel _ like a lie. But it didn't feel like Keith believed himself either.

Turning a corner, finding the street vacant of cars and people, Lance grabbed Keith's hand, fluttering their fingers together. Keith looked at him.

Lance smiled. When he stepped, he deliberately knocked his shoulder against Keith's, jostling their easy stride. “Are you gonna stop feeling guilty every time I ask or not?”

“Not. I. . .it was just the other day. I shouldn't. . .I don't  _ need _ it--”

Frustration was a tingle of spice at the back of Lance's throat. He swallowed, but it refused to leave. Lance squeezed Keith's fingers tighter.

“It's the same thing as calories. Right? You did some pretty strenuous stuff the other night, and, well. . .” Again, hush-hushed, even in the empty street. “You blasted through it. I bet you'd feel better if you ate.”

Keith dropped Lance's hand. “Why are you always hung up about this? Are you saying you  _ want _ me to?”

“Of course I am.” Said airily, free hand fluttering dramatically over his chest. All show, all sincerity. The Lance McClain way. “Are you telling  _ me _ you'd be a-okay with it if I starved myself?”

Keith was appalled. “ _ What _ ? No! No, I'm  _ not _ saying that at all--” He quieted, chewing on his lip. What Lance said sunk in. “Oh. I guess. . .huh.”

_ Same cloth, different cut _ , Lance thought again.

Counting it a victory, Lance leaned in, arms akimbo, and said, “See?”

Keith frowned at him and shrugged.

“Since we’re on the subject. . .you really need to talk to Shiro. He asked about you.” Lance gestured at Keith’s face, the exhaustion painted under his eyes. “He noticed. . .all this.”

A car drove down the street on hissing tires. The rain picked up a little, as if it planned to chase the driver out of town. Keith snagged Lance’s elbow and pulled him under the striped awning shielding a doorway, advertisements and decor for a decades-old ice cream shop at their backs. Waiting on him to say something, Lance took a moment to rub the water off his face. When he lowered his hand, he found Keith staring at him oddly. He scrunched up his nose and made a silly face back.

“What?”

Keith lowered his eyes, regretted it, and stared across the road. “. . .What did Shiro say? About  _ all this _ ?” He mimed what Lance did, hand up, circling around his tired expression and sunken cheeks.

“Oh. Just that he was worried about you. He said he thought you weren’t eating,” Lance admitted. “Like, it’s been nearly a month. I’m shocked he hasn’t said something sooner.”

“He has.” Keith squeezed his hand around Lance’s arm. He realized, a beat later, what he was doing and his hand fluttered away, hanging at his side, clenched into a fist. “I’d hoped having Thanksgiving with him would’ve helped.”

“I’m going to dish this out as someone that has more siblings than I know what to do with. . .but just  _ tell _ him. Everything. Starting from the very beginning, like you told me.” Lance leaned forward a bit, peeking around, straining for a glimpse at Keith’s face. His wild hair helped conceal it away beneath its heavy, wet curls. A gentle touch secured part of it around Keith’s ear and earned Lance his attention. “I bet it’s not going to be as bad as you think it is. I don’t think it’s actually going to go bad at all. When he talked about you, he. . .”

Lance frowned. Lightly, he tapped his chest, thinking on how to put it into words.

Another car drove by. Keith glanced away, watching it slip down the road like a brightly colored fish in a shallow stream.

Lance reached forward while he was distracted, and pressed his hand flat against Keith’s chest, over his heart. “Like that,” he said quietly. Nothing else fit exactly right.

He didn’t allow the touch to linger. But even so, as he slid his hand away, Keith found the time to graze his fingertips across Lance’s knuckles. It sent shivers rocketing up Lance’s arm.

Keith’s hand hung in the air after. Then dropped. His uncertainty on what to do translating in these small, jerking movements, in the way he felt inside, new knots and twists and tangles trying to form. He pushed away from the door and headed into the rain. Lance fell in step behind him, water splashing against his shoulders, his sneakers.

Maybe it was the wrong thing to do. That gesture, that small hand press, it meant something between them. Lance wanted Keith to understand that Shiro spoke out of love, that’s all. But sometimes saying things aloud robbed them of their value. It made them harder to believe, for some reason.

“Hey? Keith?”

Lance saw Keith’s jaw clench, his shoulders tighten, the rapid way he curled and relaxed his fingers. It was a punch--the hand folding itself tight, ready and aimed, and then releasing, all the tension rolling off Keith’s back like the rainwater against his jacket.

The first words out of Keith’s mouth were, “I’m sorry.” And the second, too. “Sorry.”

Lance, who could recognize worry when it came and how it came, didn’t take it to heart. “You’re alright.” He caught up to him, and even all the ugly-minded people of Indigo Pull couldn’t keep Lance’s hand from his. “You know, if it’ll help, I can sit with you while you do it. If you do it. Talk to Shiro, I mean.”

They turned the corner, a right at the stop sign, like the car before. They were nearly there: Just visible through the rain, Lance spied the thrift store’s hanging, painted sign rocking in the breeze. And, if not for that, Lance felt Pidge and Hunk’s emotions crawl up the sidewalk towards him, two familiar things that’d been absent way too long. He bit back a smile. They’d missed him, too.

Keith noticed his look, and he knew what it meant. And, more than likely, this was a needed pause on the conversation they were having. It gave Keith time to come to a decision. It gave the two of them time to be dumb, stupid teenagers doing dumb, stupid teenager things.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Keith promised, and, because he was Keith, and because he probably sensed Lance itching to bolt, he dropped his hand. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

Lance didn’t need any more encouragement than that.

He darted.

Hunk spotted him first and lifted an arm, waving it around excitedly. He rocked up on his toes, stretching as high as he could. “Lance! Hey, buddy! We were wondering where you were!”

“Meaning you’re  _ late _ !” Pidge called out, hands cupped around his mouth, shouting above the rain. “Way to make us wait! You know, in the  _ rain _ ! Where it is  _ wet _ and  _ freezing _ !”

Beside him, Allura chuckled into her fist.

Lance skidded to a stop. He held up a hand, palm flat, shaking it as he bent double, catching his breath. “One tic. One sec. Okay.” He started laughing at their smiles and to hell with it--he grabbed them both up and pulled them against him, half in the rain and half under the overhang they’d been waiting under. 

Hunk didn’t complain. His strong arms squeezed Lance right back. “Ha! We missed you, too. Long time, no see,  _ amigo _ .”

Pidge patted Lance’s back once, twice, then squirmed away from the net of arms, bouncing back under what protection from the rain he could get. “It’s been like four days, Hunk.” He took off his glasses and squinted at them. “Hey, Allura?”

“Of course.” She’d been smart and wore a bright pink raincoat over her sweater. It made easy work of drying Pidge’s glasses, and, rather quickly, she passed them back. “It’s good to see you, Lance. Did you have a good Thanksgiving?”

Lance see-sawed his hand. “Could’ve been way better,” he skated. “Keith ate with us, though, so that was pretty cool.”

“Pretty cool?” Keith stepped up. His amusement was great to see, better to feel. “It was just dinner.”

Hunk shook his head. “No. Wait. Hold up. ‘Just dinner’? You had all of Mama McClain’s culinary delights stretched out in front of you--hello? Her baked mac-n-cheese?--and you say ‘it was just dinner’?” He cut his eyes to Lance, pitched his voice down into a stage-whisper, “Man, I’m not one to run your life or question your choices, but I think you might need to reconsider this one.”

“I can hear every word you’re saying, Hunk.”

“Are you? Are you sure? Because no one leaves that house thinking it was ‘just dinner’.”

Keith shot Lance a pleading look. All grins and raised shoulders, Lance took the reins from him, jerking the conversation somewhere else.

“Hunk, chill, your jealousy is showing a bit,” Lance commented.

Hunk pretended to be stung. “Me? No!” he said, laughing. Inside, he was all champagne amusement, much as Keith, much as Pidge and Allura listening on the sidelines. And speaking of Pidge, Lance snapped a hand out, pointing and tapping at the sweatshirt he wore.

“Also? This? It’s the most hideous, absurd, endearing thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Where’d you get it? I want ten.”

Pidge wilted under the observation. As if it were possible, he attempted to fold his arms over the image, but no matter how he positioned them, the gaudy stare of a pigeon stared back at Lance with a large, hand-painted, amber eye. 

“Look, I think the real lesson here is to not ask questions about things,” Pidge murmured, frowning.

“Mh, too late. Answers, Pidgeon. Ha! Is that why you got it? The nickname?”

“. . .not exactly. My grandparents are hard of hearing.” Pidge relented: He dropped his hands and jerked the sweatshirt out by the tail, offering Lance a full view of its grandeur. The more of it he saw, the more Lance loved it. “I told them I wanted to go by ‘Pidge’, you know? They heard ‘pigeon’. So, here we are, a few ugly shirts later, covered in pigeons.” He bit his lip. He acted off-put, a little embarrassed, but he was still very much charmed with the thought put behind it. The effort to understand. “It’s a start, I guess. Better than the alternative.”

“I like it as well,” Allura added. Unsurprisingly, she’d dressed expensively, despite where they were going and the relentless rainfall. The dark blue of her wool or cashmere sweater couldn’t hide that. Still, she spoke truthfully; she said she liked it, and she did. “It, and don’t take this wrongly, but it suits you. The green, I mean. Dark hunter looks lovely on you.”

Pidge smiled. “Well, thanks.” He turned to Lance next, holding his hands out towards Allura like she was a shining-star example of how friends should be. “ _ That’s _ how you compliment a shirt, Lance. Take notes.”

Lance brushed him off. “In this rain? They’d melt off my arms before I got home.”

Pidge groaned. Hunk laughed and snapped his fingers. “He got you there.”

Keith looked between them all. Quietly, he added, “I guess Lance has to give you a rain check, then.”

Immediately, Hunk howled with laughter, his signature, boisterous outburst. Allura’s hands flew up to her mouth, her bright eyes crinkling, giving away her silent giggles. Pidge threw up his hands and, in all manner of playfulness, stormed inside, muttering something about how he was ‘no longer friends with anyone,  _ ever _ ’. Lance stared at Keith like he’d never seen him before, mouth slack.

It was Keith’s sly smile that became his undoing.

Lance would keep the image of that smile with him for the rest of his life. He swore it on the gum-spackled sidewalk outside of Indigo Pull’s lonely thrift store, the winter rain, and the way Keith’s eyes fell on him the moment he said his joke.

Lance threw his knuckles against Keith’s arm, the hit easily deflected by the sturdy support of muscle hidden under his jacket. “Nerd,” he breathed. 

Keith shrugged, pleased with himself.

The thrift store was anything you could expect from a small town in the South. Meaning, of course, that the tile floors were a little grubby-looking, chipped in places, currently marred with a ghost trail of half-visible footprints. It boasted a high ceiling for no other purpose than to collect shrieks of unattended children playing with second-hand toys while their parents combed through overstuffed racks. The walls were double-hung with sidebars, most slightly bowed in from the weight of donated dresses or coveralls, heavy winter jackets with moth-bites or comforters sagging on their wire hangers. A single display case wrapped around the cashier station, bright lights striking against tarnished watches, vintage rings, and trays of singular earrings without their match. 

There wasn’t much to Indigo Pull. Other than the diner and the supermarket, the thrift store was the only other place kids tended to hang out, particularly on rainy, weekend days. It made for a fun, easy way to spend time. And nothing brought people together more than grimacing at the same, ugly grandpa sweater tugged off the back of a rack or practically fainting when they recognized their great aunt Maude’s signature cat-hair purses up for sale.

A group of five was hard to travel in. Lance got pulled in so many directions, followed so many calls of ‘hey, look at this!’ that he half-forgot to look through the clothes himself. Pidge was the best at finding the most off-the-wall things, like a jumper color-blocked in obnoxious 90’s fashion or, once, a denim jacket covered with the craziest assortment of patches Lance had ever seen. That one found a new home at the Holt estate; it hung in Pidge’s closet, a prize, to this day.

Hunk, on the other hand, had a specific knack for finding the good stuff. Want a name brand leather jacket, near mint condition, in your size? Some jeans that don’t have gross stains? A pair of Vans, galaxy-print, that’ll fit your feet and don’t smell sour? Leave it to Hunk. They’d only been in the store for ten or so minutes, and already, he’d worked his magic.

How he saw the glimmering crushed velvet from halfway across the room, Lance couldn’t say, but he did, and he brought it up to Allura, spread across his hands like an offering. “I’m guessing this is your size,” he said, holding it out. 

It was deep, deep red, the kind of red that tried to disguise itself as black or maroon in certain lighting. Ruby red. Garnet red. Regardless, in Allura’s dark hands, the fabric turned to gemstone, looked as fine and pricey as the heavy necklace she always wore.

“It’s beautiful.” She held it to herself at the shoulders, and let her friends appreciate the waterfall cascade of ruffles spilling down the sides and hinting at the back, cuffed at the wrists. It was pulled straight from a gothic fantasy. “And, yes, you’re right. I think this will fit.”

She slung it over her arm, the first treasure plundered from the wreckage.

Keith picked through a collection of Hawaiian-themed shirts like he actually liked the style of them. Lance leaned over and made a face, glancing up at Keith’s with his brows raised high. “You like this stuff?”

“Not really.” He pulled one out--black, covered with capsized fishing boats and spear-headed marlins leaping from stylized waves. “I mean? Does anyone?”

Lance had to laugh. “Okay. No. Put that back. Hide it before Pidge buys it for us and makes us wear it for picking on him.”

“He wouldn’t.”

Down the aisle, Pidge leaned back, holding an old band T-shirt in his hands. “Oh, no. I would. Not that one, though. I’ll find something better.”

Lance dropped his voice, “He means that we’re going to regret picking on his  _ amazing pigeon sweatshirt _ .”

Pidge pointed at him. Keith returned the shirt where he found it, frowning. “I didn’t make fun of his sweatshirt,” he argued. “I didn’t say anything about it.”

“Yeah, but we’re a thing, so he thinks you’re one my side. You’re a casualty of war now.”

“I am on your side,” he said softly, taking the whole thing seriously.

Lance leaned against him. “ _ Keith _ .”

“What?”

The innocent way he asked it back floored Lance. Almost,  _ literally _ floored him. He had to step back and grab the clothing rack for support with one hand, the other covering his eyes. “Nothing,” Lance told him. “Nevermind. You’re fine.”

Keith didn’t know what to make of that and left him alone, returning to his browsing with a new knot pinched between his brow.

It was after this that Lance remembered the money in his back pocket. Sneaking off with the excuse of going to the restroom, he ducked into a stall and thumbed through what Shiro gave him. Two twentys, more than a king’s ransom in a thrift store. With Hunk’s keen eye, Keith might could leave here with more clothes to fatten his closet. The thought struck a sweet, forlorn note. He checked what little he had to his name, too, and added his thirty bucks to Shiro’s, folded the bills neatly together and jammed them in his jeans.

He caught Hunk perusing assorted angel-faced statuettes and rejected art projects crowding a shelf near the back. Quietly, he explained his plan, and quickly, in case Keith wandered around the shelving unit and found them.

“You got it.” Hunk’s smile was honey and gold, the way seeing yellow sometimes makes you happy just because it’s that kind of color. “I’ll see what I can find. Black and red, right? He likes those colors?”

Lance nodded. “Just whatever makes you think of him. And make it look like you aren’t specifically looking for him.”

“That’s the secret--I don’t. How do you think I end up finding all the best things? They jump out at me, I don’t go looking.”

They exchanged smiles and bumped fists, and Lance left him to it.

He found Pidge next, standing with Allura, the two sorting through second-hand penny novels and old, dust-cloaked textbooks. Allura noticed him first. Thrown carefully over a shoulder were the shirt Hunk found earlier, and a couple new summer dresses covered with sunflowers.

“My favorite,” she said, but Lance wasn’t sure if she meant the type of dress or the type of flowered print. Maybe it was both.

He smiled all the same, said, “Nice.” and promptly had his hands overloaded with books in the next instant, the heavy hardbacks stabbing corners against his palms. “Jeez, Pidge, chill!”

“I am chill. Hold those. Please,” Pidge added, remembering, suddenly, that manners were a thing. He leaned inside the shelf, grabbing at something that’d slid in the back. “I thought that’s what it was. Look!”

Arms streaked with dust, Pidge held up a small, paperback book. It looked remarkably unremarkable. Plain. Homemade. Not worth the fuss of taking off half-a-shelf of books to find.

Lance cocked a brow. “It looks like a kindergartner project. Is that construction paper?”

“It’s cardstock, so close.” Pidge bounced up on his feet, _thwapping_ his knuckles against it to cloud off the lingering cobwebs and dust. “It’s an old ARC. From. . .the early 90s? It’s old. Publishing houses are a little more select on how they send these out now.”

Lance adjusted the books in his hands. “A  _ what _ ?”

“An ‘advanced reader copy’,” Allura explained. She stepped into Pidge, watching him flip through the 70-odd pages of it, searching for handwritten notes and line edits. “It’s a type of marketing for new novels.”

“And how they get reviews early on. Think a physical advertisement. It’s all about generating hype.” Pidge grinned. “Someone wrote notes in the columns. Score!”

“Uh. Okay.” He didn’t understand the appeal and why Pidge was looking at it like he’d struck gold. “That’s cool, I guess?”

“A  _ novel _ ty, that’s certain,” Allura chuckled, earning a laugh from Pidge with it.

Lance rolled his eyes. He smiled with them, full of their good humor, and crouched next to Pidge, helping him put the books back where they came from. 

Keith didn’t move far from where Lance last saw him, and was easy to find, standing on the opposite side of the same rack, carding through flannels now. Lance came up beside him, still knocking a film of dust off his arms.

“Hey, you,” he greeted.

Keith’s gaze slid to his and Lance swore the moment it did, something eased up inside him. “Hey.”

“Find anything you like? Or anything strange? Awful? Nightmare-inducing? I want to see.”

“Hm. No. Just regular clothes.”

“Nothing with odds stains?”

“A few. But that's a given.”

Lance waited. Keith frowned, thinking about something, and finally reached for a shirt a little ways down the rack.

It wasn’t, in fact, covered in stains, or a weird pattern, or was a color so hideous it didn’t deserve a name. What Keith showed him was a simple black-and-blue flannel shirt, downy soft, well-loved and cared for.

“I found this,” Keith told him. “It made me think of you.”

Lance felt his cheeks warm. “What?”

“Yeah. The blue, it’s. . .” Keith pressed his mouth into a line. Lance tasted his awkwardness as much as saw it, and knew what he was getting at.

“Are you saying it matches my eyes?”

Keith glanced up. He held the hanger for Lance to take. “You knew?”

“Kinda. You got messy inside, so I guessed,” Lance said carelessly, taking the burden from him. The fabric  _ was _ soft, the kind that couldn’t be manufactured. This shirt had seen years of wear and ever fiber bent under it, slid under Lance’s gentle caress in a way that promised warmth. “Do you like it?”

“What?”

Lance repeated himself, “Do you like it? This? It’s too big for me.” Which never stopped him before, but that was beside the point. “Do you want it?”

Keith shook his head. “No. . .Lance, you don’t have to buy anything for me. I’m fine.”

“You’re lying,” Lance said, not unkindly. He folded the shirt over his arm. “I want to. It’s also, like, five bucks so why not?”

“Because I can’t do the same thing for you. It’s not fair.”

“Do you want to hear about what’s fair or not? Or about things you can do that I can't?” His meaning rang clearly, even if he skirted around saying it out loud. “Because  _ there _ is something I can  _ never _ repay you for.”

Keith shook his head. His hand lit lightly on Lance's arm, skittish as moths. “Lance, don't. That's not. . .I don't want paid back for that. For anything.”

Lance took a step into him, leaning in, who gave a damn who saw and what they thought about it. “Then stop thinking I want the same from you.”

Keith dropped his hands. Sadly, he glanced down at the flannel, and stepped back. “Fine. Okay. But only if you want to.”

“Of course I want to. Why wouldn't I want to? And also?” And now, Lance cheered up his tone, being playful, to ease up the breath of hurt Keith carried inside. “You'll look amazing in blue.”

That did it. Keith's lips twitched up in an unsure smile. “Blue's your color, not mine.”

“That's the point,” Lance told him, and gave him a wink.

It was easier after that. The small slight, that tiny fissure of misplaced upset, healed. Keith started to enjoy himself, looked through the clothing racks with a little more enthusiasm. He pulled out shirts with odd prints--like faded frogs or multi-colored cowboy boots Lance refused to leave without. And the best part of all, Keith smiled a true smile and said he'd ‘have to wear it then’.

Hunk, the Godsend, found jeans in Keith's size, pajama bottoms, a few soft sweaters. Keith tried to pretend he didn't like them as much as he did, but Lance was quick to add them to his arm, shooting Keith an easily decoded look. 

The larger the pile grew, the more space it would fill in Keith's closet. It made Lance quick to smile, and, relenting, Keith gave in and stopped his silent protests.

They left with two bags full of clothes for him. Allura took home her dresses and shirt and a smart pair of charcoal slacks. Hunk found a gaudy, fluffy orange jacket that was the best ten dollars he'd ever spent. Pidge, along with the ARC, bought three old telephones and two dead calculators.

To which Lance asked, “ _ Why _ ?” as he helped Pidge carry them out. 

“I'm going to dismantle them for parts. Never know.”

Lance shrugged and left it at that.

While they walked together, hugging the buildings they passed to keep out of the rain, Keith fell in step with Lance, and pointed out what Lance hoped went unnoticed:

“You didn't get anything for yourself,” he said.

The bags of goods swung in Lance's hand. He gave Keith a smile.

“You didn't see? I have stuff.”

Keith frowned. “No, you don't.”

Rain drops misted in Keith's hair, strung like onyx beads. His sleepiness made Lance drowsy on his feet, maybe made him a little more daring than usual.

“If you think for one second I'm not borrowing half this stuff after you've worn it, you'd be wrong.”

Ahead of them, Pidge flashed a grimace over his shoulder. “ _ Gross _ .”

Allura peeked back, too. “It's sweet.”

“I think it's little of both,” Hunk teased.

Lance held out his arms. “I'm a man of simple pleasures, what can I say?”

Apparently, so was Keith.

After a brief discussion about where the five wanted to stop for a late lunch, Lance spied Keith glancing down at the bags he held--and he felt his quiet pleasure as his own.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


That night, the rain drove down in torrents.

The roaring hiss kept Lance awake well past midnight, providing a backdrop to his restless thinking. He tried, but nothing could shake the image of Shiro and Adam in their engagement suits, posed and happy, glowing and smiling and clasped at the hands. The picture cut off at their torsos--Lance's imagination supplied the rest. 

No, not even that: He'd  _ seen _ the matching slacks and white, white shoes striding--purposefully, fearfully, resigned--across the Holt's clean, kitchen floor.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


That night, while it rained, while it poured, three stray cats went missing.

Keith double-checked. 

No collars. Fur matted and shaggy. Their bodies ribcage-thin and gangly. Creatures of gristle and spite, he dubbed. All of them were mean enough to claw deep trenches in his arms, across the backs of his grabbing hands. They bit, and they spit, and Keith had a hard time believing anyone would miss them. Usually, he could calm them with just a look, but tonight, they were as wild and dangerous as the hunger Keith tried so hard to ignore.

Their blood hit his tongue like hot sewer water. Rancid milk. Sour, slimy, stomach-heaving.

He wondered about that as he buried them in shallow graves near his old shack in the woods.

They never tasted like that before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh ho ho ho, some things are finally revealed!! I had this planned for so long that when my friend read this and commented 'I almost threw my phone and howled in the empty parking lot', I felt like I'd won some sort of lottery! DID ANY OF Y'ALL GUESS???


	19. Chapter 19

One of the first things Shiro put up in their apartment was a hand-painted plaque near the front door. It hung on a thin wire above their key holder, the paint--once a lovely aqua blue--bleached white from the sun. Keith recognized it immediately the first day it appeared and now, some weeks later, as he padded quietly around the living room in the pre-dawn gloom, he found himself drawn to it again. In this new, small space, it was a familiar thing, pulled straight from his childhood.

The fresh scent of coffee haunted the room alongside him, smoked and warm. Under it, Keith picked up the syrup-sweet notes of the flavored creamer he used, the three towering spoonfuls of sugar. Prepared just how Shiro liked it, in a mug Keith picked out for his twentieth birthday, a well-loved thing of chipped black enamel, cracked from overuse. Joining it on the kitchen counter was the day's paper, an early morning impulse buy Keith brought back after a lengthy walk around the sleeping city, much like a cat dragging home the prize of a mouse or a crumple-winged bird.

Thinking of cats, Keith’s stomach lurched. His nerves were fire ants: crawling and biting and mean. 

He walked them out as best he could, but eventually, he came to rest in front of the plaque again on bouncing toes, eyes turned up, scanning over the sign in the dark. He saw it perfectly, every fading curve and split in the cheap wood.

_ Come as you are _ , it read, in a dead man's careful script. 

Everyone knew the story. Shiro liked to tell it, even now, his reminiscences a way to cope through heartache and keep Adam’s spirit alive. Keith, for his part, had been there that day, on the younger side of growing up, and his feet still recalled the sharp pain of leaning up on his toes to watch Adam at the kitchen table, a thin paintbrush pinched between his fingers and dripping with that bright blue paint.

It was a gift. A message. A creed to follow. 

Shiro’s love was a shelter that broached into Adam's--and later,  _ their _ \--apartment. It was unconditional. It was the most powerful force on Earth.

The smile that grew on Shiro's mouth, the light in his eyes, when he saw Adam's work was something Keith would never forget.

In the new apartment, the dark of a new morning beating at the windows, Keith touched his fingers to the fading words.

_ Come as you are _ . 

Keith lowered the same touch to his chest. He pressed his palm flat against his heartbeat, felt each nervous drum of his pulse. Behind him, around him, from wall-to-wall, the apartment slept and breathed its easy breaths. Birds twittered outside, singing new songs and old songs, tunes of good morning or goodnight or goodbye.

All at once, Keith missed Lance something awful. His hand slipped down, tracing the bold lines of the flannel shirt. The very same Lance picked out for him, the one that stole the blue of his ocean eyes and made Keith remember how they fluttered when Lance smiled.

When it became apparent that Keith was dragging his feet, Lance set up an ultimatum:  _ We can't see each other until Shiro knows. _ A punishment. For them both. Keith could deal with a lot,  _ had _ dealt with a lot already, but this was a shared thing, and each day he put off was another Lance endured too. Honestly, it was clever on his part: where Keith would silently suffer, he wouldn't put Lance through the same.

Carefully, Keith leaned back against the kitchen counter, eyes on the sunrise, mind all the way back on the McClain's front porch.

He almost broke when he went out for his walk. Though unintentional, his feet--his legs--every part of him turned towards the familiar paths to Lance's, took them, walked halfway down them before he realized what he was doing. Truth be told, the missing started then, it was the busy-handed coffee brewing and anxious pacing that forced Keith to shove it down, ignore it, best as he could.

Which was to say, not very good at all.

A board creaked in the hallway. The floors settled, popped. Tattletale sheets huffed out a sigh. Springs--old, tired things--groaned as weight shifted, rose. 

Keith heart lurched, punched against his ribs. 

He'd spent several days planning, going over what he might say, how to say it, think up the words he could use. It all sounded stupid. Fake. A joke. The name alone-- _ vampire _ . No. Keith wouldn't say it. He couldn’t.

Shiro's feet thudded down the hall. A moment later, the bathroom light came on, a golden panel that brought attention to the rest of the dark house. Realization struck Keith clean through: He hadn't so much as turned on a lamp all night, and stood in the kitchen with evidence of being awake for several hours sitting on the countertop.

The door clicked shut. Politeness a habit as ever.

His anxiety made everything worse. His ears picked up slamming car doors, conversations from blocks away, the hissing  _ tiip tiip tiip _ of a dove’s talons scraping the roof. The dusty odor of old incense overwhelmed his nose. His sight, now hawk-like and darting around the room, found things even Shiro missed while cleaning--motes of dust, a scuff of red clay by door, fingerprints smudged against the microwave. When he flipped on the kitchen light, Keith's eyes watered immediately, and he ducked his head, hands cupped around his face to keep it bearable.

What if Shiro thought he was joking? What if he thought he was telling the  _ truth _ ? Where would they be at the end of the day--together still, or broken apart, Shiro hidden in the walls of the apartment, Keith's permission revoked, leaving him suddenly homeless all over again?

What if Lance wasn't right about all this?

Keith abruptly thought of other things, by force of will. Rolling, lazy hills dusted with snow. Laughter caught in narrow halls, eleven voices strong. The spiced scent of anise and cinnamon baked into the air. Sparkling sea glass eyes. The warmth of an afternoon held in tan hands; touches that pressed against him like summertime.

If missing someone could be a living thing, could transform and breathe and blink and bite and crave, then Keith had gifted life to his own loneliness. It prowled inside him, restless. With nothing else to do, Keith let it borrow his legs.

Shiro caught him like that, pacing circles around the small kitchen. 

Keith caught him looking in a gentle, knowing way, dark eyes softened by something he couldn't name.  _ Love _ , supplied a voice in his head, mimicking Lance's tender tone. Because he would know. Already knew. Maybe always would.

_ Nothing bad will happen. _

Keith reached out and grabbed the lip of the counter, a creature of longing wearing his skin.

“What's all this?" Shiro swept his hand out at the offerings laid bare.The coffee's lazy steam, the taste of it coating the back of Keith’s throat. The newspaper, crinkled by the imprints of Keith's fingers. "It's not my birthday."

Then, skeptical, Shiro muttered to himself, in a playful way, “Is it?”

Keith cracked a smile. Lance's words of encouragement rolled in his head. 

A new sort of restlessness ate him up inside.

“No. It's not.” Keith watched Shiro take his usual seat, listened as the mug scrapped forward. He focused there, on Shiro's hand folded neatly around the mug's handle, his silver ring reflecting the light. 

“What’s the occasion?”

It was now or never. 

Keith looked down at his own hands and drummed his fingers. He drew in a breath. Another. Held them both so tightly in his chest his heart somersaulted. “I. . .we need to talk.”

Silence dangled at the end of his sentence. Indigo Pull grew a little pinker, a little brighter, struggling against a thin layer of overcast gray. If he hurried, if this went well, Keith could make it to Lance's in a matter of minutes. He knew secret ways through the forest, paths he took--and, inevitably,  _ made _ \--around the pattern of the trees.

And if it didn't go well. . .well, Keith decided to take the same route regardless. Good or bad, he required a certain type of healing.

Shiro lowered his mug. Had he even taken a sip yet? Keith thought back and couldn't remember. “Talk about what?”

Keith shifted his feet.

Shiro tried again, tone deliberately light and teasing, “Are you finally telling me you’re seeing someone? A certain someone that keeps coming over at weird hours, talks a lot with his hands, and makes you--”

“What!  _ No _ \--” Keith bristled. He played at being angry, covered his embarrassment with stammering bite. “You already  _ know _ that.”

Shiro grinned.  _ Now _ he took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “Do I?”

“I hope so. Otherwise you might need glasses.”

Dark eyes narrowed, fanned from holding back laughter. “You know. . .Now that you mention it. . .”

“ _ Shiro _ .”

His brother’s mouth tilted sideways, hiked up a cheek, brought his dimple to life. And Keith, without thinking, without an ounce of earlier nerves, found himself smiling back.

Shiro pushed the mug aside. For all the small trouble of fetching the paper, it lay to the side, ignored. “There. That's better," he said, and Keith had the impression that all the jokes and gentle antagonizing was meant to calm him, distract him. "What did you want to tell me?”

Thoughts of the farm rushed back again, a tide always sweeping him in. His hand fluttered to his shirt, his fingers hooking along each bold line of blue and black. His worry, his loneliness, they bloomed like Allura's white roses, heavy-petaled and thorned.

_ Nothing bad will happen. _

Keith squeezed his eyes shut briefly.

If he turned and opened his eyes, if he looked at the dull dawn casting in from the windows, Keith would see that plaque hanging on the wall. All the time pacing new trenches in the kitchen floor hadn't changed that, nor all the long nights swollen with fear. As ever, it read, in Adam's crisp penmanship:  _ Come as you are. _

Keith looked over at Shiro, found him smiling still.

And so, with his hands braced in front of him, Shiro looking his way expectantly and attentive, Keith told him everything, as much as he could remember.

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  
  


Once he started, Keith found he couldn't stop. The past year--the good of it, all the bad--poured out of him.

Shiro listened to it all quietly. He held the mug. He didn't, then did once more. His dark brows took new residence in his hairline. Silence was as good of an encouragement to keep going as any--certainly better than the alternative--and Keith took every gifted second of it, filled it up, flooded it with every confession Keith had kept locked inside.

At the end, Shiro did three things, none of them expected.

First, he muttered, “ _ Huh _ ” in a rush of breath. Second, Shiro climbed to his feet and walked over to him, mug abandoned by the lonely newspaper. Keith eyed him partially in suspicion, partially in anticipation, and braced himself, heart racing, for an argument. A fight. And most of all, the worst of all--rejection.

Without hesitation, the movement easy, well-placed and intentional, Shiro hooked his arm around Keith's shoulders and pulled him against his chest. 

Keith blinked rapidly at this new feeling, the flush of borrowed warmth, the downy-feel of Shiro's tank top against his cheek. The smell of their shared laundry detergent, the spice of day-old body wash.

"You don't--you aren't--" Keith had used up all his words. The ones he managed to grasp at were broken, scattered things, hardly worth saying.

Which was fine. Shiro, who up until then hadn't said anything, now spoke freely and all at once. "I'm not. Whatever you're trying to say, I'm not."

Keith started drawing back. "You. . .believe me?" That was the true worry, that Shiro would think this impossible thing was  _ impossible _ , and pass it all off as whimsy. It  _ sounded  _ impossible when he'd said it, down to the distasteful act of feeding on stray cats and dogs. Keith delicately left out any mention of Lance and his family; some things needed to remain secrets or weren’t his to share.

Shiro let him go. "Would you lie to me?"

How he said it sounded more like a statement than a question. 

The answer came easily, "No."

Shiro smiled. Behind him, Keith saw the promise of rain in the gray clouds seconds before he heard the hiss of raindrops striking the roof. Winter existed all around them, yet he felt as warm as spring.

The third thing Shiro did was give him absolute acceptance.

The stress of the last few days fell away. The relief came so suddenly Keith nearly collapsed from it. All his fears, all the long nights and longer days worrying down this moment to the quick. He expected everything Shiro didn't give him, hurt from a heartache that was never meant to be his, formulated plans to ease the transition back into homelessness. All for nothing.

Shiro kept on smiling. 

The sun kept on rising.

Nothing in the world had changed, aside from the length of the shadows tiptoeing across the tile. The room still smelled of coffee. Shiro's hand still warm on his shoulder.

Nothing had changed, but if Keith was being honest with himself,  _ everything _ had.

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lance began to learn how to name things properly, not simply or by impulse. What he once called 'happiness' was much more than that, he came to realize, as was 'anger' and 'sadness' and 'guilt'. People did not feel one thing exclusively: People felt so much at once, varying emotions a constant, kaleidoscope change, that it was no wonder Lance often got overwhelmed.

He was getting better. At shutting off connections, at understanding the slight difference between annoyance and irritation, melancholy and actual, heart-squeezing upset. As the weeks pulled Indigo Pull deeper into December's relentless chill, Lance  _ grew _ .

He owed it to the lessons with his mother, and, of all people, to Nadia. The pair of them were like weeds sprouting in the fine cracks webbing across sidewalks, stubborn-rooted and flourishing, despite the odds against them. Together, they experimented with their gifts, found new or better ways to handle them. Nadia's fire stopped leaping to her fingertips whenever she was upset. Ashes didn't follow her; her feet didn't burn blackened imprints in the floor. The house bore its scars, sure, and the McClain's fought to forget the sharp terror of Thanksgiving night, but they slowly started to heal. And there, right there, that's how Lance's gift evolved: It became less surveying, less intrusive, and more and more like his mother's power. Gentle.  _ Healing _ .

Nadia told Lance best one glittering, golden afternoon, being brutally honest in the way only children are. She said, as she poured over a new coloring book, this one’s pages pristinely white, "They're called gifts for a reason, aren't they? And they're  _ ours _ ."

_ Ours. _

From then on, whenever Nadia felt her power surge, she bit her lip and  _ breathed _ , willed down the impulse, the magic, the  _ whatever _ it was that made them all different, until the heat stopped pulling out of her and the threat of fire died. On the outside, she looked nearly unaffected. On the inside, the battle to keep control knocked lights in Lance's gift. 

Nadia's flames, it seemed, revolved as much around emotions as Lance's own.

During early evenings, when school let out and homework was promptly completed, Lance would join his parents and a mix of his siblings at the dining room table. As dinner simmered in the kitchen, the scents of caramelizing onions and browning butter heavy in the air, Lance was instructed to drain the fatigue from the room. Only a little at a time. His mother urged him to remember himself first, always.

Thing was, she needn't have worried.

Draining, healing,  _ encouraging _ anything to do what it didn't want to do was harder than Lance imagined. Harder than tearing it out, harder than taking it in, that's for sure.

But he  _ tried _ . He  _ tried _ to learn the difference between physical weariness and weariness of the mind, the kind he could feel when his dad sank down in his seat after the day’s work or when Luis stood at the kitchen sink, washing the dust from cleaning the barns off his hands. Lance became newly acquainted with Veronica’s exhaustion, born from poor sleeping and poorer dreams. Rachel, he learned, carried shrapnel inside her heart, black and stony, old, old hurts that never properly healed. Lance saw them in flickers, never enough to reach out and touch, only to notice and wonder over.

His mother kept her faith even when Lance’s faltered. “Everything takes time,  _ mijo _ . Seeds don’t bloom in only a day. You’ll get there.”

And, surely as the garden flourishes with time and attentive hands, Lance broke past his own barricades.

Little things, at first. A new breath of life in Veronica’s eyes as they passed in the hall. A lighter twist in Rachel’s smile. Marco releasing a loud, barking laugh when some bitter thing eased up inside him. His siblings cast their glances his way, and each tender look flushed through Lance as embracing Nadia might--or as sensing Keith’s volatile emotions bounding up the driveway always did.

By then, a new Saturday stretched a sleepy grey overhead, cloudy skies weeping a cool, light drizzle. The world smelled like mud and the promise of a true, driving shower later on, and Lance’s shoulders ached from clearing out the cattle stalls in preparation for it. He’d been up since dawn doing chores, mind fuzzy from waking too early, his actions automatic and thoughtless. With nothing to focus on, Lance spread his awareness outward, finding the small lights of his family as they readied the day. His mother was in the kitchen, her kindness a kiss of soothing warmth; his father and brothers stalked the lower fields, content and amused. Their laughter went unheard, but not unfelt--it popped in Lance's chest and drew an unconscious smile across his face. Veronica and Rachel were too far out of reach, though something told him, a hazy remembrance or a dull thread of connection, that they were closer to town. Lance experimented with this a few times. He cleared his head, focused on the  _ sense _ of them, the familiarity of it, and pivoted until he felt aligned and on the right path.

_ This way _ , he’d think, with blazing certainty.  _ V and Rach are here _ . He did the same for his mother’s energy, Nadia’s bright fire, his  _ abuela _ ’s, and knew he was right each time.

During another one of these breaks, while leaning against a sturdy pitchfork jammed in the dirt, scrying the farmlands this time for Sylvio and Marco ( _ the den _ \-- _ no, they’re in the kitchen now _ ), Lance turned automatically towards their property line. He blinked, found he was staring quite intensely at a wall, and puzzled over it until his world turned into tangles and smooth lines and the narrow, golden strings of genuine excitement. The pitchfork clattered to the packed aisle between stalls. He rushed into the rain immediately, practically skidding in the damp grass, shoes sliding in the mud.

Keith didn’t seem surprised when Lance started down the driveway, but he felt it, along with everything else, a small shiver of what was to come. Keith knew it like Lance knew it because they’d both been thinking about it for nearly two weeks, this moment of coming back together.

They met halfway in all manners of speaking--partially up and down the hill, half in the grass of the front lawn and the smooth path of the concrete driveway, partially in and out of each others hands. Lance grabbed Keith’s arms exactly when Keith reached forward to snag Lance’s jacket. Their smiles crept across their mouths. They laughed all at once, together, the sound startling crows out from a nearby tree.

Raindrops freckled Lance’s cheeks the same way they gathered in Keith’s dark hair, on the shoulders of a very familiar blue-and-black flannel shirt. 

“You did it.” Lance didn’t ask. Keith being here was proof of it. The relief, the happiness, the breath of still-present concern was proof of it.

That, and the unsure set of Keith’s mouth, a smile trying to both exist and not. “Yeah. I told him.”

“And," Lance prompted. "What happened? I want details. Every detail.  _ All _ the details.” 

Lance dropped his hands. Keith did not. Instead, he lifted them further and dusted the rain off Lance’s cheeks. The small flick of his fingers lingered against his skin, purposeful and gently attentive. His violet eyes were dark and searching and peeking up from underneath his long lashes.

Lance’s heart tripped. A flush scorched his cheeks. Talking suddenly seemed like a really, really big waste of time.

Then Keith’s hands fell away, and he took a single step back. The distance was more unbearable now than it had been stretched across all the miles of Indigo Pull.

“It went like you said it would go," Keith began. "I told him, and Shiro. . .he got up and hugged me, before even saying anything. It was. . .weird. But nice, I guess, and not what I was expecting. He asked a lot of questions after. A  _ lot _ . I think he's going to throw out anything with garlic in it even though I told him,  _ twice _ , that it doesn't bother me. Because. You know. The whole not-eating thing.”

Lance dropped his hands to his hips, and leaned in, unable to keep the grin off his mouth. No, more like he  _ wouldn’t _ keep it away. “See! I told you! And you actually doubted me? I’d be hurt if I didn’t have the satisfaction of being right.”

Keith’s eyes fell to Lance’s mouth, started for a moment too long, then back up. “. . .I waited a long time over nothing, didn’t I?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lance assured. “But I’m glad it wasn’t longer because I missed your stupid face.”

Keith let out a breath that sounded a lot like a tiny laugh. “That so?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know. I can  _ tell _ .” Lance thumped a hand to Keith’s chest, fingers splayed, palm against the rocketing punch of Keith’s heart. “You feel the same way.”

“I feel the same way.” 

Though repeated, the words fell past Keith’s lips far softer than Lance had said them. They were feathered and whispered within an inch of Lance’s mouth. Lance sucked in a breath. Keith closed his eyes. 

The kiss tiptoed before it learned to walk, at first just a touch, a sigh, a question for forgiveness curved on two sets of lips. Rain slipped down their cheeks and into their open mouths. Their breaths clouded around their faces, given life in the chilly air. One kiss, and Lance’s whole face and throat went pink. One kiss, and Keith took Lance’s warm ears between his hands and pulled him in for another, another, nearly two weeks worth of missed chances made up in the short span of two minutes.

Each kiss cured Keith’s loneliness in a way that Lance never thought he'd ever replicate.  _ This _ was what his mother meant by healing: It was encouraging something already waiting to be encouraged.

When they broke apart, Keith shook his head. Hidden tension lines erased from his face, a weight unknowingly caught between his shoulder blades unfurled. Lance thought he felt and looked fine before, but that was because he was too caught up looking elsewhere to see that Keith still clung to old anxieties. Or did.

Keith touched his fingers to his own mouth, expression perplexed. Lance caught his hand, laced their fingers together, and pulled him towards the barn before Keith got it in his head to ask questions.

"Hey, let's get out of the rain. It might not bother  _ you _ as much, but I'm freezing over here." Lance laughed. Warmth touched his chest, an unknowing gift. Some of December fell away. "Stop that."

Keith's smile said he wouldn't.

The barn welcomed them with a blast of artificial heating and the musty odor of hay, dust and living things. Cows mooed softly, their hoofs shuffling, kicking, massive bodies shifting in narrow stalls. Barn swallows, tucked protectively up in the rafters somewhere, fluttered in their old nests, out of sight. For Lance, this was a melody of  _ home _ , as familiar as the inkblot scent of Veronica's room or the black pepper spice of Marco's favorite cologne. He knew all the animals by name--fittingly as he named most of them himself, with Nadia and Sylvio's help, of course--and every inch of the barn, the old chicken coup, every shed and outcropping scattered on the property was a map of his own heart. They were such a part of him that Lance didn't at first understand the breath of awe Keith felt when he glanced around the organized clutter the barn held inside.

Dropping Keith's hand, Lance went up to one of the stalls, this one holding a spotted cow with a demure list to her lashes. When he balanced on the gaps between the fencing, she ambled over and allowed a touch to the clumsy heart-shaped marking on her forehead. Lance beckoned Keith over.

"Come here. Her name is Cora," Lance introduced, "short for  _ Corazón _ , and don't tell the rest of the herd, but I love her the most _ . _ She'll let you pet her. Don't be nervous."

"I'm not nervous." Keith stepped up beside him. He didn't climb the boards with Lance's earned ease. He didn't climb anything at all. 

Lance cast him a knowing look. Keith met it without flinching.

"Okay." 

He was  _ something _ close to nervous. Lance's own heart raced and skipped, and his fingers shook with subtle tremors. He held out his hand to show Keith, and watched quietly when Keith lowered his eyes to his feet. There came a soft blur of pain, a deep, deep ache, then nothing--and Lance understood.

The ground coughed up when Lance jumped down. Accusingly, he said, "Keith. You gotta eat."

Keith didn’t look at him. His eyes were focused just past him, on one of the other cows. "I have." There was more to it than that, but whatever he wanted to say after, Keith kept it to himself. "A little."

"So. . .cats, again?"

Keith shrugged. 

They were alone in the barn, if you didn't count the cows and birds and field mice that lived in the old feed sacks. And seeing as they couldn't tell anyone anything or had much of an opinion about the two of them, Lance hiked up the sleeve of his jacket, and held out his exposed wrist. Keith's eyes snapped up, looked at the soft underbelly of Lance's arm, then further, their eyes meeting.

Sweat prickled down the back of Lance's neck, as sudden and unexpected as the touch of Keith's fingers against his skin. He watched Keith trace over the pattern of his veins, witnessed his lips part, his eyes fracture in dazzling color, and his own heart hiccuped. 

They'd only done it twice before, and ever since, Lance waited for it to happen again. It wasn't like in books or movies or myths, there was no  _ wanting _ , or anything close to  _ desire  _ whenever he thought about it. There wasn't any romance to it, any heightened belonging or feeling or  _ rightness _ some stories liked to preach. It was simply a bite and what came after. Lance remembered the rain drumming on the old hunting shed roof, how the night seemed impossibly dark and Keith impossibly cold and beautiful. It'd been an easy decision to make, taking off his shirt and bearing his throat. He didn't know any better then--neither of them had. He'd expected more magic out of it, for it to feel better than it had, but the truth of it was that it wasn't like that at all.

What made Lance hold out his arm again, just like before, was the same thing that made him offer the night he found out Keith's secret and the time after, when they lay stretched out on Keith's bed.

Keith's fingers slid into his palm. A different kind of longing poured out of him, infecting them both.

Lance said, "Keith," the exact moment Keith lowered his hand.

An argument brewed between them, sure as the rain shower building overhead. It dampened the air. It flooded the spaces left between their unspoken words.

Soundlessly, Keith climbed up on the fence, much as Lance had before and held out his palm towards Cora. The cow took one look at him and breathed a heavy breath from her nose. Her tail flicked in a whirlwind. She gave the ground a solid stomp.

Being farm-raised had some perks to it. Lance knew anxiety in animals like he now knew it in people. He'd grown up seeing the signs as and before they happened, and leaned a sense of appropriate caution while handling one of the farm animals whenever it spooked.

He pulled himself up on the fence alongside Keith and gently touched his outstretched hand. "Hey. Careful, she's--"

As soon as he spoke, the cow stepped abruptly forward, pressing her large forehead against Keith waiting fingers. Brow furrowed, Lance glanced first at Keith, who blinked back at him, bemused, then behind them, into the shadows of the barn, expecting to see the hunched form of his  _ abuela  _ lurking within sight. 

There was no one, unless you counted the cows and the birds and the hidden mice. No one but the two of them.

Keith delicately touched the heart-shaped mark on the cow's forehead. "She's what?"

"Nothing." This ignited a curiosity, this anxiousness-to-calm in a wash of seconds. While eyeing the cow and her sleepy face, Lance asked, "Is it hard? When you. . .hm, hold on, I'm trying to figure out how to word it. When--no, with the  _ cats _ , are they ever--is it hard to find food," he finally blurted.

Shock hollowed Lance's stomach.

He gripped the fence, tight knuckled, swallowing down worry lines and twists of despair. 

" _ Keith _ ."

The sensation dulled, more thanks to Lance's practice shutting things out than Keith overcoming what he felt. Looking at him, Keith was statuesque in his tranquility, fingers stilled, mouth hooked in a God-awful frown that should've been enough to send the cow stumbling back.

Carefully, after a long moment stretched by, Keith asked, "Why do you want to know about that?"

Rain  _ plipped _ against the tin roof, softly, softly, then with driving fists. The coupled barn swallows fluttered their wings. Further in, a bull blasted a nervous huff from his nostrils. Lance shuddered.

Maybe it was too much to ask for, on a day already full of confessed secrets.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Lance waited, and just when he decided to take back what he asked, Keith finally, reluctantly-- his heart a mess, his head a mess, his stomach a twisted knot--answered.

". . .no." Keith slipped back to the floor. Now out of reach, Cora scuttled back in her stall until only a shadowed outline of her remained. "I never thought about it before, but, no, I never really have trouble."

"I bet that's part of it," Lance said. His voice was a hush. "Your vampire hoodoo."

Keith spared him a withering look. "'Vampire hoodoo?'"

Lance's flourish was all fingers at his own person. "Hello? You're speaking to a--uh. Psychic? Empath? You get it. Same stuff, different box."

"That doesn't make any sense."

" _ Fine _ . Different stuff, same box. Better? No? I think it fits, so I'm sticking to it. What I'm  _ trying _ to say is maybe you kind of naturally draw animals to you. You know, like some bugs look like flowers to lure in other bugs to eat?"

Keith tilted his head. A knot caught between his brows, and Lance resisted the urge, as he always did, to reach over and rub it away. "Maybe? I never thought about it. I try  _ not  _ to think about it."

"And that doesn't help, does it? Except to make you feel all gunked up inside." Lance lifted himself up to sit on the fence, legs hooked over the beams, hands gripping balance. It wasn't enough for appearance sake. Keith grabbed one of his legs like Lance was in any real danger of falling. After a considering moment, Lance touched the raised veins branching across the back of Keith's hand, blue rivers in a pale landscape of scarred skin and knuckled hills. "You felt better after talking to Shiro, didn't you? Let's keep it going. I want to know everything there is to know about you. Get it all out."

Keith was skeptical--skeptical and hopeful and tender-hearted--at the notion. Lance squeezed his fingers around Keith's hand, swung his leg to the side, knocking it against his chest, all to inspire a smile, a laugh, and he got that and more and more and more. The chilly rain couldn't touch them here. All of Indigo Pull's frost-crusted nights and mornings and its rainy afternoons were as far away from them as it could be.

Gently, Keith reminded him, "I did."

"But was that everything?" Lance could count at least one secret Keith still kept, the one trapped in his heart, the one Lance felt everytime Keith came around. The one he sensed  _ now _ . No, maybe not that. Maybe Lance meant he  _ mirrored _ it. Because the feelings were the same, not borrowed or new or just from one of them or the other. It was the same, the very same, the exact shade of summertime warmth.

When Lance looked up, he saw Keith's face battle with a smile, and likewise, Lance fought himself from leaning in and kissing it into existence. 

The truth came out. "I don't know," Keith admitted. His eyes were focused downward, staring at the careful fold of their hands. "It's not like with you. I don't have anyone to ask. I'm . . .figuring it out as I go."

It wasn’t as beneficial as Keith believed. Same box, different stuff; different box, same stuff. It all translated into a mess of 'try this', 'try that' while Lance struggled with putting it into practice. Though wholly different, the two of them were more alike with their oddities than not.

"It's pretty much the same for me, you know, and I have an entire house trying to give me pointers and tips and past experiences to 'grow from'." Exasperation puffed past his lips, a well-deserved sigh. "I can only learn so much from it. And Nadia--" Keith perked up at her name, outside and in. "--she really only has herself."

"How is she? And Sylvio?" Keith was there for part of the rough weeks following, dark times filled with boiling tears and burns left on Lance's hands. Whenever he'd see them, Keith would touch each scarlet mark and his worry consumed them both. Now, though healed and forgotten, Keith pressed his fingers to the places Lance caught Nadia's tears. His hands, his arms, the dip of his collarbone.

Lance closed his eyes. Compared to the pain Nadia carried, her burns were tiny, tiny hurts, nothing at all.

"She’s doing fine. Learning. Growing." With a smile, one proud and full of love, Lance explained, "She hasn't burned anything in over a week."

Keith's hands fell away. Lance opened his eyes. Again, they met halfway, grabbed each others fingers, their close stares.

“She asks about you," Lance went on to say. The rain crashed overhead, ocean loud. Through the cracked barn door, the glimpse of the farm was bleached of color, a fraud in a gray, gray world. "Like, I'm not exaggerating when I say  _ all the time _ . I think she missed you more than I did."

"More than you? Is that possible?"

Lance's laughter punched the air,  _ ha ha ha.  _

Keith's laughter was muted, caught behind his teeth and trapped in his bouncing shoulders. Lance pushed him away, rolling his eyes in a fit of drama his  _ mamá  _ would've scolded him for. The amusement didn't die, in either of them.

"Surprisingly, yes, it  _ is  _ possible. That kid loves you, you know."

Good humor buckled in on itself. Old tangles appeared, resilient as weeds. Lance combed through them without a second thought, fell into it as easily as falling into sleep, an unconscious effort to sooth and make right. 

Before Keith withdrew, before he ran out into the rain, the forest, what lay beyond, Lance grabbed both of his hands. "Keith. Listen to me, okay? People  _ love _ you, and they’re allowed to love you. And, you know what?”

Keith didn’t look at him.

Lance told him exactly what, “You're absolutely worthy of it."

Because that was the problem, the black fear that twisted through every good feeling Keith ever allowed himself to feel. It spread like an infection, a mold, touching everything, sparing nothing from its ruin.

Had it always been there? Or was this new, another side effect of becoming the thing Keith hated most?

It was both, a new thing and an old thing. It was self-hatred at being something he could never change and loathed. It was an ever-present feeling of rejection from a mother who ran away, hurt from a father who ran to the wrong place, abandonment from a brother who ran off to war. People who left and didn’t come back or who left and came back in pieces. People Keith loved unconditionally, now and then and forever.

His dark hair slipped between Lance's fingers, soft, smelling like cheap shampoo. Their cheeks brushed, their foreheads pressed together. Keith held on to Lance's wrists, his stomach leaned against Lance's knees. They were their own special twist of affection, standing like that, sitting like that. Lance heard Keith breathe in deep, felt his exhale tickle against his face, his ears. He felt the way that single breath tore him up inside.

They could become lost like this, consume all the minutes the day had to offer, take a loan out for every nighttime hour, and would it be enough? Everything Keith felt, whether he wanted to or not, spilled out, a flood of  _ wants _ so deep Lance grasped Keith's shirt to keep from slipping in them.

Too many to name, too many the same.

Lance wanted Keith to feel loved, to know love by its proper name. He deserved it. He deserved to wake up every day knowing he was important. Because he was. Because he always was, and always would be.

Lance took his face back between his hands.

It was this, and it was them, and it was the delicate way they came together, Lance kissing away Keith's fears, Keith kissing back to forget what hurting felt like. 

Outside, it rained and rained and rained. 

The world, in that moment, washed away, stranding the two of them in the barn with an ark's worth of cattle and all the seconds of the day, of all days, to figure everything out.  _ This _ was a day made to spend secrets, and so, as they broke away but not apart, huddled together, touching in a thousand different ways, Lance told him the best one he had.

Keith didn’t have to say anything.

Lance knew he felt the same way.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The rain let up; the clouds, didn’t.

Which was perfect and, if Keith hadn’t known any better, he’d have thought one of the McClain’s owned a hidden gift for tampering with the weather. That’d be something. If that were his gift, he could easily make cloudy days whenever he needed, give presents of blazing sunshine to Lance that’d match his smile, have it snow in June because, well, wasn’t the purpose of magic to be  _ magical _ sometimes?

Lance laughed.

The sound brought Keith back from his daydreams.

“What are you thinking about that’s got you feeling like  _ that _ ?”

They stood in the upstairs hallway of the farmhouse, flanking either side of Nadia’s bedroom door, braced against the wall in a way that foretold just how long they’d been standing there, waiting.

At the first sight of him, Nadia came running down the rainy lawn and clambered up him with a monkey’s ease. Braced for burns that didn’t come, Keith’s returning hug was a little delayed but just as heartfelt. He gave one to Sylvio too, when they found him waiting on the porch, and both Lance and Keith quickly succumbed to their demands of going out and  _ doing  _ something. Who  _ cares _ if it was raining! Nadia smartly told them both she  _ and _ her brother had rain jackets just for this very thing!

As if Lance would’ve argued against it. He pretended to consider, pinched his chin in a look of long-suffering, and heaved a sigh so big it put the Big, Bad Wolf straight out of business.

“Oh,  _ fine _ ,” Lance told his niece and nephew. He looked convincingly strung-out until the act bubbled away in what must’ve been four forces of amusement. Then he was all glowing smiles and exuberant hand movements. “Why are you two still standing here! I thought you wanted to go out, but here you are, standing around and--”

He didn’t finish the rest.

The kids tore up to their rooms.

Keith and Lance followed them, and here they were, some minutes later, listening to Nadia move things in her closet, presumably resurfacing that raincoat she mentioned before. 

"Well? You gonna tell me? Or is it a secret?"

Keith considered this. After what Lance said in the barn, he didn't figure there was much hidden between them anymore.

Truthfully, he tried  _ not _ to think about it, those delicately strung words, spoken once in English's three then playfully in Spanish's two. They meant the very same, a translation for every single one of Lance's wide smiles and how looking at him like that made Keith go warm.

Lance grinned.

Keith realized his mistake, and turned his head, staring down the orderly hallway. Baby pictures of the McClain siblings stared back.

"Say anything, and I'll leave," Keith warned, with no real bite.

"Hm. That so? That sounds like a lie."

Keith glanced at him.

" _ Feels _ like one too," Lance pointed out. He was still grinning.

"You shouldn't be able to use your powers for evil. That isn't fair."

"For who? For you? Because it's entirely fair for me to use what I'm given."

"Spoken like an adept cheater."

"Last I checked, this wasn't a game of poker."

Before Keith could craft an answer, Nadia opened her door. She wore a brightly-colored raincoat, a brand of yellow so intense it almost appeared green. Her boots matched exactly. They hurt Keith's eyes to look at. "Are you two fighting?"

Lance knelt in front of her at once, hands carefully braced against his knees. "Not in the way you're thinking. Are you ready?"

Nadia held out her arms, artfully showing off her coat. "Yeah!"

They fetched Sylvio from his room, and found he, too, wore a raincoat with matching boots. His were shark-themed, complete with faux-fangs lining the gray hood, cartoonish jaws that threatened to snap close over his head. Lance was immensely jealous, and by the time they walked down the driveway, he'd expressed it no less than four deliberate times.

"This is a hate crime against me, personally," he waxed on. "They don't make things like this in  _ my _ size. And why not! I like to have fun, too! Grown-ups can like sharks just as much as kids!"

Keith didn't point out Lance was only a teenager, and still a good few months from being 'grown-up' himself. To the kids, they were both adults, so it wouldn't have mattered if Keith made the comment or not. 

For what it was worth, the entire conversation had Sylvio smug as a plum over his style choices, and Keith reasoned that was part of the reason Lance laid it on so thick.

Nadia's received high praise from Hunk, of course, who loved the color yellow as much as it loved him back.

The four of them meet Pidge and Hunk at a gas station in town. This, Lance confessed, was his and some sly texting's doing. Allura, coiffed hair pinned expertly beneath a cap, wearing the same rain jacket the day they went thrifting but in a different color, looking as expensive as someone could in the rain, was Pidge's.

"What? It's Saturday? We were all free," Pidge pointed out. Under Lance's half-smile and arched eyebrows, the defense sounded weak. " _ Stop  _ that."

"I'm not doing anything!"

Pidge punched Lance in the arm regardless.

Hunk chortled. And, infected by the good mood of everyone being in the same room again, Keith shared Allura's gentle laughter.

"I'm actually glad I was invited along. I wanted to discuss plans for Christmas." Allura clapped her hands together. Her eyes were the same sort of bright as Nadia's coat. "Coran suggested throwing a party of sorts, but I pointed out that a party at the estate might garner unwarranted attention. And I'd feel awful turning anyone away, considering."

"'Considering'?" Hunk broke in. He glanced back at her, hands held out in front of him, a make-shift basket holding on to every candy bar the kids selected off the shelves. At the side, Lance clumsily counted a wad of crumpled bills, adding them up to Pidge's approximate guess at their price-with-tax. When it ended up being just shy of it, instead of asking the kids to put something back, Pidge snatched the money from Lance and sneakily added another bill to the pile, playing it off like he'd just miscounted it.

Keith saw him do it, though, and he made a mental note to thank him later.

"The holiday spirit! It's terrible luck to turn away guests on Christmas," Allura proclaimed. Her voice dripped with honeyed letters and caramelized vowels, almost too sweet to listen to. "Actually, it's terrible luck to turn anyone away any time of year."

Lance took the money back, and performed his own dubious recount. Satisfied the amount could afford the kids the treats they wanted, Lance passed the money to Hunk to complete the deal. "That's the most southern thing I think I've ever heard you say."

Allura didn't fall for the bait. She continued, "Even so, I wanted to do something for everyone. A dinner, maybe, something a bit more subtle and private. Coran loves any excuse to cook a big meal."

"And that," Lance added, "is the most southern thing I've heard about Coran."

Keith, the only other poor kid in the group, appreciated his attempts at satire. They exchanged small smiles, and Lance came up beside him. The brush of his fingers across the back of his hand was as Allura just said: subtle and private.

"What do you usually do for the holidays?" she asked, once Hunk rejoined the group and the kids were tearing into their small ransom of treats.

"Everyone usually comes to my house," Pidge explained. "We have dinner, exchange gifts, and Lance and Hunk sleep over. The standard."

"Then we do the same thing at my house," Hunk said. "Food, sleepover, maybe more gifts if  _ someone _ forgot to bring them the first time."

Lance huffed. "Well sor- _ ry _ ! Try keeping up with a big family like mine and see how easy it is."

"I do," Hunk told him. "A pan of my turtle brownies takes care of the whole house. Simple. Clean. Just like that."

". . .I hate how honest that is," Lance deadpanned.

"You mean  _ genius _ ."

Pidge cut in, naturally, like that was his cue, "It's the same process between all of our houses, really. We change the order and dates depending on if we have 'family-exclusive' things planned."

A crease formed between Allura's prim brows. "Is that common?"

"Not really. Sometimes mom wants pictures done on this day. Or my grandparents are coming in  _ that _ day. But usually, even that doesn't stop Hunk or Lance from crashing the festivities."

Like a pair of birds, they chorused, "They aren't festivities if we aren't there!"

It was perfect enough to sound rehearsed. But, no, of course it wasn't. It was better than that because it was an old joke, a joke now inclusive to Keith and Allura. A thing they all shared.

Allura smiled good-naturedly, muffling her laugh behind a polite fist. Keith wasn't as reserved. When he laughed, it came out loud and solid, like a punch in the face might be.

Lance beamed like a new sunrise. And Keith made it a point not to look at him because all those telling things would just turn buoyant inside him yet again. Maybe they already were. A glance from the corner of his eye saw that the smile didn't leave Lance's face even after the laughter died out.

"We'll have to get together and pick a date that won't interfere with any of your other plans," Allura decided. "I'd hate to plan something all of you, or even one of you, wouldn't be able to attend." On this, she turned suddenly towards Keith. "What about you, Keith?"

He stared at her.

Then stared some more, unsure she'd actually asked him something.

Then Lance's bony elbow thrust against his ribs, and he blurted out, "Oh, no. We don't celebrate."

Allura tilted her head. For a moment, her eyes fell to Lance's arm, then drifted up to Keith's face. There wasn't a lick of judgement in her look, only a slight confusion as to why it was necessary. "Oh. I--"

Keith spoke over whatever she was about to say, any one of several implications, either incorrect or things Keith didn't want to hear in her old money accent. "I just mean. That. I'm free. Whenever. If. . . I'm invited."

"Well of course you are!" Allura flapped a hand. The jewels set in her rings flashed blue, green, and red. All dazzling, little sunspots of color. Keith almost winced. "Why wouldn't I invite you?"

He didn't say anything. When it became apparent--from the several sets of stares and the lull of taunt silence--that it was expected, Keith shrugged his shoulders. Behind them, the clerk hissed out a sudden breath. She ducked quietly out of sight, shaking her hand, holding the tip of her finger against her lips.

"Well, don't think that. After all," Allura continued, leaning in toward Keith, sharing a secret the entire store could hear. "We're all friends."

Sylvio took a bite out of one of his candy bars, the visceral crunch of it the loudest thing in the store, the town, the whole state. The wrapper screamed under his fingers--no, no it didn't. It shifted, sighed, crinkling like normal wrappers do. In fact, no one seemed to notice it. Only Keith. 

And Lance, who noticed it differently. His face took on an odd look, or, no, it was his face that looked odd somehow. The freckles, maybe. How could a face have so many freckles? Keith blinked, and Lance's face was normal again. Deep down, a forgotten ache clawed at his stomach.

Lance grabbed his hand. He was saying something with a smile and a little laugh, and Allura replied in kind. Their voices were both too muffled and too loud to make out any of the exchange. Keith thought he heard words  _ sick  _ and  _ home _ but then he was outside in the misty afternoon light, a thousand-thousand water droplets suspended in air, and he forgot what he was trying to focus on.

"Keith."

Lance always said his name like a song, like he remembered the melody in bits and pieces, just enough to keep singing to.

Keith glanced at him. Off him. Past him, down an alleyway close by. Everything smelled damp and like Lance's citrus body wash. Everything was gray or blue or blue or gray.

" _ Keith _ ."

A slash of black cut into view. He knew it would. He could smell it now, musky, feral, close and far and nearing. When did Lance's hand leave his?

Two moon eyes glanced up at him, broken in a yolk of different yellows. Greens. Contracting brown around a slit of pupil.

The cat didn't move. Why would it? It didn't know to fear him, or what this slow approach meant.

". . .Keith?"

Fingers dug in his guts, his insides,  _ inside him _ . They clutched they pulled they ripped him apart tore him to ribbons and ribbons and ribbons--

The shadows of the alley plummeted into true, unstable darkness.

Though clouds stretched for miles overheard, the sun scorched through them as if they were made of gossamer, burning the back of his neck, his hands.

Lance grabbed his shoulder.

Keith flinched.

Something spilled, fluid-like, out of his hands. The cat. It fell limply to the asphalt, dead or dying, its neck cleanly snapped.

Revulsion clenched his throat shut.

Then, just like that, the feeling ebbed into static. White noise. Nothing at all.

Lance's hand still sat on his shoulder, his fingers pressed in deep, hurting.

Mutely, though he didn't want to ask, he didn't want to  _ know _ , he said, "Did I hurt--"

The answer was immediate. "No. Everyone is fine." Then, guessing the next one, Lance said, "No one saw either. I don't think."

They were alone, both of them kneeling on the gritty bite of uneven payment. Behind them, cars streaked along the road, tires hissing, faint baselines throbbing in the air. In front of them stood an impossibly tall wall marred by generic graffiti.

". . .and Nadia? Sylvio?" It hurt to say their names. This outing was meant to be fun, light-hearted, a way to fill a Saturday afternoon, and Keith had ruined it.

"Hunk's walking them home."

_ Sick _ .  _ Home _ . The pieces snapped together, one by one by one. Keith didn't care for the picture they formed.

"And you--"

"And me," Lance sighed. His hand withdrew, and when it did, everything sharpened again. Keith heard drums pounding nearby--a line of ants marching up the brick wall. Pidge's voice carried over, and Allura's, but they were pinpricks walking in the opposite direction, backs retreating blocks of green and pink, and their words muddled with the wind. Keith saw each one of Allura's hairpins in shocking detail, all gold, all nearly hidden in that cloud-like hair of hers. Beads of water dotted Lance's forehead, smelling, quite sickly, of exertion and salt, no more citrus or laundry detergent.

A weight dropped into Keith's palm. And  _ whoosh _ , it all fell away.

Wearily, Lance sagged against him, he head dropping to Keith's shoulder. "What's the  _ matter _ with you?"

Keith stared at the dead cat, but with Lance's energy scrubbing his emotions clean, all he could feel was dull-edged regret. "I. . .I don't know. We were talking, and. . . It's all--"

"--broken apart. I know."

But why? Keith stared at the cat. The cat, having no other choice, stared back with wide, open, open eyes. 

Why didn’t he stop himself? He'd  _ always _ stopped himself before.

Lance said, "I think the cashier girl got a paper cut or something. 'Cause it was after that you. . .left yourself."

Keith thought back. Yes, that sounded right. The quick intake of breath, the girl shaking her hand in annoyance. The metallic scent of blood, muted down by chocolate and sugar and Lance standing so near. At the time, Keith didn't register it. Now, it was all he could think about.

He lifted his hand, found Lance's holding it down, their fingers snaked together and locked. That, too, made a lot of sense.

"I'm sorry, I--"

It could have been so much worse.

Lance touched his cheek. His eyes were oceans just short of the crashing waves of high tide. Keith didn't deserve to look at them, at  _ him _ , and dropped his gaze, settling on a fuzz of rust decorating the bright, blue side of the alley's only dumpster.

"Don't, Keith. I know. I  _ know _ ." Of course he did. All of Keith's emotions were his, down to the weightiest, ugliest one. "Here's what we're gonna do. I'm going to take you home, and if Shiro is there, we're going to find somewhere else to go. The hunting shack. Wherever. We'll find someplace."

Keith grit his teeth.

To make himself feel worse, he caught sight of the heap of black fur laying at his feet, and made himself stare at it.

"I can't ask you to do that, Lance." He said it like he meant to say  _ no _ .

"You're not asking me for anything," Lance shot back, which sounded like he was saying  _ it's this or nothing _ ,  _ make your choice _ .

Indigo Pull held its breath while Keith weighed every option, every scenario, every outcome, debated what could be and what should've been, and sorted through what he wanted from what he needed. He thought of the apartment, comically small, filled with cramped corners and cartoonishly big furinature. He thought of his bedroom,  _ his own bedroom _ , and Shiro’s, just across the hall, and what it meant to be that close again. He pictured a bedroom crowned in stars. A yellow raincoat, a hood rimmed with plastic teeth. Two smiling, pink-cheeked faces. A family that always accepted him, for better and for worse. He thought of what would've happened if Lance hadn't been there, if he didn't have his magic or his caring heart.

Selfishly, Keith plucked a single memory from the barn, one still new to him, only hours old: the air beaming down from the radiators baking him inside his jacket, Lance's hands on his, the stark lack of hesitation between whispered words.

_ Te amo _ .

_ I love you. _

He made his decision.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  


A note waited for them when they reached the apartment. Written on an old take-out napkin, one corner darkened by a coffee spill, another scrunched by haste, it read:

  


_ Went down to the station for a bit. Call if you need anything. _

_ -S. _

  


It was late afternoon by then, though it was hard to tell from all the rain darkening the windows. In Keith's bedroom, with the black-out curtains and the double-folded sheet pinned over the glass, it appeared as if night had fallen in Indigo Pull hours before it was scheduled. 

The boys fell across the unmade bed. 

Well,  _ one _ of them fell across it, rather dramatically mind, a hip propped, a hand caught on his brow, the slowest of sighs rushing past his lips. Ever playful, ever inspiring a laugh, as was his nature.

His audience was a tough one. Not even a cracked smile or a round of applause.

Keith sank down to the edge of the mattress and stared at his hands.

They both felt a lot of things, but only one of them felt it twice and only one of them struggled to feel less. They were a mess, for different reasons, for the same reasons.

Lance sat up and took Keith's hands.

Pidge loved to theorize about parallel timelines, how every decision fed into multiple realities that, in turn, branched off into even more realities, on and on and on, terrifyingly limitless, until time itself exhausted. In them, Lance and Keith were like this: Two boys sitting in a small room, holding on to one another. Or not. They were in love, or they weren’t, or it was entirely onesided on Lance’s part, or Keith’s. A universe existed where Lance didn’t have his Empathy; one, then, that stole the night Keith fled to the city and earned his curse.

One existed where Lance, without Keith there to catch him, died at the bottom of the gully.

And another where Keith grew up in a two-story house down the road from the McClain farm, his family in-tact, his life one of endless love and sunlight.

Some realities brought them together, like this, like now, with joined hands and Keith leaning his weight against Lance’s chest, seeking comfort. In others, they’d never meet, never speak, never grow from rivals into what always loomed in the distance. Or might not loom in the distance. It’s hard to say because both were true.

It hurt to think about, but it was all Lance could wonder as he shrugged off his jacket. Maybe they were luckier, in another time and place. Maybe the story they had now, this messed up one, had a happy ending. He could hope that, right?

Keith touched his wrist, his arm, settled against his throat.

Lance closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and thought that if he had any say in the matter, he’d make this reality--the one he loved most because it was  _ his _ and it was  _ Keith’s _ and it was Pidge’s and Hunk’s and Allura’s and his family’s--the best one he possibly could.

Every choice he’d make would matter.

Every choice would leave them, at the end, for the better.

That was Lance’s choice.

Keith’s came haltingly after, in the near-painless feeling of his fangs puncturing Lance’s throat.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  


The station always had a certain smell like that of newsprint ink and old coffee, mellowed with the forgotten chore of dusting off the high places on the bookshelves.

Tonight, it smelled little better. Maybe more leaning on the side of hours-old burger grease and fry salt. Acidic ketchup unknowingly smudged on a shirt sleeve, the discarded wrappers in the trash. The memory of a lemony spray used to swipe across the crowns of all the shelves. Shiro might be biased on the last one--he was, after all, the one who usually volunteered to clean away the inch-thick dust, while Iverson occupied his usual chair at his desk, spitting colorful strings of curses down at the meager reports he attempted to sort through.

Iverson sat there now, perched on the same chair, tucked under the same desk. No papers cluttered the top, only the careful folds of his fingers, the glint cast from the golden bracelet of his watch.

“Hey there, Shiro. Wish I knew you were coming. I’d’ve waited on dinner.”

The past few weeks were this:

Shared company, time and efforts.

Iverson wanted to find Adam’s murderer as much as Shiro. They kindled similar fires, similar burdens of missing someone no longer there. Sometimes they drank small doses of whiskey from Iverson’s home-brought bottles, their glasses clinking with sweating ice and fond memories. Sometimes they wandered into the cleared, empty office, and painted it alive again with stories.

Mostly, they read over the same reports and evidence logs until their eyes were bleary and tired.

But not tonight.

“Mitch.” Shiro walked up to the desk. He pressed his hand against it. “I need to ask a favor from you.”

Iverson blinked his one good eye.

They were similar in that way, too.

“What is it, son?”

It drug down his pocket the entire way here, from the weight, from the guilt of stealing it from Keith’s room. He wasn’t home, he couldn’t ask. Shiro wasn’t sure if he knew how to phrase it, even if Keith had been there to try.

He pulled the photo from his pocket, frame and all.

A storm raged behind the glass. Smiles were stitched on faces. Hands were laced in hands, braced on shoulders, snuck around waists. Shiro remembered the wind and sharp scent of ozone. He remembered his dad’s deep, belly laugh and Keith’s tiny, wide-eyed awe at the sky going from blue to purple to black in a few, gusted seconds.

And he remembered  _ her _ .

Iverson watched him as he popped open the back of the frame.

The Holt’s were an organized bunch. They labeled and dated. They didn’t like to forget.

Shiro slipped the photograph to him, the glossy image dotted with mirrored blurs of the lights.

He tapped a finger against her face. One he swore he’d never see again. One he promised he’d never reach out to, for the way she broke apart his family. Twice. Everyone had reasons, but Shiro never could guess at hers.

“I need you to find her,” he said, and Iverson’s face registered what he meant, what it cost him to ask.

“Well I’ll be a sonuvabitch. There’s a sight.”

They didn’t say her name out loud.

They didn’t need to.

It was written on the back in Colleen Holt’s spidery, precise hand, crammed between Shiro’s and Keith’s and Texas’ names:

_ Krolia _ .


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for bullying in this one, lads!

The last day of school only lasted until lunch, and the anticipation of two weeks off made it feel as long as two consecutive days, not a handful of hours. The student body buzzed with excitement for the holidays, and Lance absorbed it all, unknowingly mirrored it back, and the school was at once a loud, jovial place to be. Teachers chuckled about 'the holiday spirit' while Pidge and Hunk cast their knowing stares Lance's way.

"You may want to tone it down," Pidge hissed at him. Unnecessarily--the hallway thundered with booming voices and laughter. Lance barely heard him above it.

"Please, like I'm doing anything," he brushed off. "Everyone's just amped for break."

Lance threw out a casual wave. Someone walked up and slapped a palm against his, said his name in a cheery greeting, then retreated down the hall. 

Hunk borrowed Pidge's curious expression. "Are you sure that's all it is? You broadcast the big stuff, bud." He glanced at him. "Who was that?"

Perplexed, Lance dropped his arm. "Uh. Schwartz? Maybe? I know his face from Track."

"Weird," Hunk murmured, and he was right, as he often was.

Lance stared at the students as he walked by. Everyone  _ did _ seem in a particularly good mood today, and he could sense it in the sea of their emotions, a permanent undertow. But was he really amplifying it? He remembered doing it a few times before, remembered, too, Hunk calling him out for it.

Was he infecting this outbreak?

Or  _ encouraging  _ it?

Lance unthinkingly hooked his fingers in the high collar of his (meaning  _ Rachel's _ ) turtleneck sweater. He wasn't sure. 

Pidge poked at his hand. "That's a  _ serious _ bruise you got going on there."

Hunk had seen it, too. "Did someone  _ throat punch  _ you?"

Lance wanted to laugh. He wanted to laugh and dig himself into a hole somewhere in the middle of the woods. Pink in the face, red in the ears, Lance batted away Pidge's hand. " _ No _ ."

Hunk and Pidge exchanged looks sharp as told secrets.

Lance bustled on. " _ Any _ way, are we meeting up at my house after? Or Pidge's? Did we ever decide?"

"We didn't," Hunk said.

"We never do," Pidge agreed.

The three of them stopped at the hallway split, pressed tightly against the wall to keep out of the way. Familiar faces hurried by, people Lance went to school with since elementary, all loosely acquainted, names barely recalled. How many times did he see Keith walk these same hallways and not know it? How many times did he make a conscious effort  _ to _ know?

There came a sudden thought: It would've been a different world if Keith's dad hadn't died.

Hunk piped up, "Hey, where's Allura?"

It was easy to notice the severe lack of her big hair and floofy coats filling the space they all unconsciously left for her. It’d been pointed out that morning, at the Holt’s front gate, but Pidge only shrugged his shoulders up and mentioned she wasn’t coming along today, and they left it at that. At the time, Lance wasn’t too concerned.

And he still wasn’t.

Lance said, "She's at the Principal's office," the exact moment Pidge confessed, "The Principal's."

The look Pidge gave him was keen as a knife cut. "Wait. You can  _ sense _ that now?"

Lance pivoted his feet, cocked his head, and amended, "Sorry. No. She just left. If we wait here, she'll catch us--that's what she's hoping for."

Distantly, they noted the soft bob of her hair advancing through the crowd. Hunk whistled under his breath.

"So, like, what level are we on now?" Hunk bumped Lance's arm with his own; his voice, when he spoke again, was charged with awe. "Three?  _ Four _ ?"

Pidge adjusted his glasses, which meant he was as equally impressed. "You're able to hone-in on location now? And  _ that _ refinedly?"

"Guys, it's not that big of a deal--"

"Is a distance thing? Or more precise? Do you just sense someone’s feelings or is it something more than that? Do you see images, maybe? Noises?"

Lance considered. "It's. . .I just sort've  _ know _ ."

He knew Allura was in the office because she  _ was _ and when she wasn't, he knew the newer truth of her leaving. It was like waking from a nightmare knowing you dreamt something horrific, the lingering, shapeless terror enough to keep you awake but not explain  _ why _ . 

In a sense, it was a  _ feeling _ .

Everything always boiled down to feelings.

Pidge looked like he wanted to say something more. But between one moment and the next, Allura stepped tidily up to the group, and unknowingly cut the conversation short.

"Hello everyone!" Her accent turned the  _ e _ in  _ hello _ into a soft  _ u _ . "I was hoping I'd catch you before class."

Her delicate hands were loaded with small, tissue-wrapped boxes. Three, to be exact, all dressed to match their favorite colors. She passed Hunk the yellow one, Pidge the green, and Lance got the blue.

It weighed next to nothing, and fit the palm of his hand.

"Thanks," Lance said automatically. Allura's pleasure was hard to miss in any sort of way. "What's this for?"

"To chase off the last day of school blues," she said. They all three looked at her. She laughed, waving away the stares and raised brows. "Coran's words, not mine. They're from him. He's been practicing new recipes all week."

Pidge popped the top off his box. Inside, nestled on more of the same tissue paper, were several lion-head cookies, decorated with bright, sugary icing, inset with edible eyes. They were wonderful, not only in effect, but in the clear, loving time that’d made each one come to life.

Hunk gave a long  _ oh _ of appreciation and surveyed his own. "These look  _ amazing _ ! Coran really went all out just for some sugar cookies! Oh,  _ man _ , they're good though," he said, rapturous, crumbs dusting his face from a single bite alone.

Allura chuckled. “I’ll tell him that. He’ll be delighted they were a hit. There's one for Keith too, Lance, if you don't mind passing it along?"

She pulled a similar box from her bag, the paper fittingly, deeply red. Lance took it.

"Sure thing.” He held it against his own, the knowledge that Keith would never try them weighing his hands. He might appreciate the look of them, the careful attention and care, if nothing else. Lance put them away--both for later and, inevitably, for him to consume. 

Above their heads, the warning bell trilled off. 

The bustle in the hall elevated. Locker doors slammed shut. Feet picked up their pace. The volume of too many conversations hurrying to a close jumped higher. Students, who were already hustling through the halls, poured through the open doorways of their assigned classes.

“I guess that’s curtain call,” Hunk mused. He dusted his hands lightly together, and then stored the rest of his treats in his backpack.

Pidge offered a small salute. “I’ll catch you guys after.” He was the only one not joining the same homeroom class as the other three. He adjusted his bag and took a step back. “Meet you in the gym before heading home?”

“Agreed.”

“Of course.”

“Obviously,” Lance said. “Maybe we can think of whose house we’re crashing sometime during the next four hours.”

Pidge pointed at him, hazel eyes bright behind his glasses. “Meaning, we won’t.”

Hunk sighed and said affectionately, “We never do.”

And Lance wouldn’t have it any other way.

He was the first to lift his hand, his knuckles offered. Pidge and Hunk followed immediately. They all, as one, turned towards Allura, who watched this small act of unbreakable friendship fondly--and a little wistfully.

They all knew it, though Lance felt it as his own, and was the one to say, “Come on, Allura. Join in.”

Her long fingers disappeared in her fist, her knuckles crowned with a crust of jewels and gold. She joined their ritual of bumping fists lightly, as to not hurt them, not that a single one of them would have minded.

As a unit, their arms fell.

As a unit, they passed along another round of goodbyes, and watched Pidge dart down the opposite hallway, his arm raised up until they couldn't see him anymore.

No longer complete, the other three headed off to their own class, the promise of the rest of the day filling their minds--and Lance knew, their  _ hearts _ \--for what was yet to come.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


As it turned out, it wasn't what anyone expected.

Allura, Hunk, and Lance--their desks forming a half-circle in the back of the room--talked quietly amongst themselves, carving the hour-long class down by the minute. It was slow work. The clock seemed to have it out for them, and ran backwards instead of forwards. A minute was longer than a day.

Lance sagged over his desktop. Dislodged pencils rolled off for new frontiers beneath other desks, to be then forgotten or re-homed. An ancient TV buzzed at the front of the room, teaching whatever lessons could be found in an old Christmas movie remake. Lance's attention skirted to and from it, unable to commit.

"What's wrong, buddy?" Hunk glanced over at him and slid a piece of paper towards Allura. A series of X's and O's filled several hashed boxes on either side.

At a glance, the victories seemed an even split.

"Bored," Lance told him, the word muffled in his long sleeves.

Allura planted her small  _ x _ and passed the paper back. "Would you like a go?"

"At what? The tic-tac-toe tourney you two are having? Pass. There's nothing worse for boredom than a boring game.  _ That's  _ facts, Hunk, don't look at me like that."

"I wasn't." Hunk slapped down an  _ O _ , neatly closing off Allura's go-to victory.

He  _ was _ , but Lance didn't argue. He rocked back in his seat and peered at the TV screen, then around the room. In a way, the students  _ buzzed _ just like the old screen, their feelings popping and settling like white noise. It might be the reason he was affected so poorly--all the boredom in the room siphoned into him, whether he wanted it or not. Gone was the excitement of the hallways, the boisterous conversation, frankly the  _ loudness _ people can sometimes be without noticing. Lance blamed the TV.

Hunk's slight curiosity touched him, the brightest thing in the room. Lance turned towards him and found him staring.  _ Again _ .

"What?"

"Nothing." The word was a chuckle, one molded from every fond feeling of friendship Hunk reserved for him. "You were zoning out again."

Was he?

He glanced around the room, spying several students slouched in their chairs, sleeping or pouring over mindless doodles or fanned-open books. Others, like the three of them, had broken off to form their own circles and clusters, an archipelago of battered desks adrift on a sea of cracked title.

Hunk snapped at him.

Lance rocketed back. "Oh. I guess so," he murmured.

Allura smiled. "I understand. I, myself, don't see much of a point of a half-day if all we're doing is watching old movies."

"To kill us all with anticipation," Hunk muttered darkly, pen scratching out a sudden, apparent victory.

Allura peered at the paper and sighed. "Lance is right. This  _ isn't _ helping."

And so they fetched a new piece of paper and started a game of four-syllable hangman.

Lance zoned out again. He let his mind wander, his heart too, and that special thing about him that let him pry inside the emotions of others. Just to see. Just to practice. Just to make the hour ooze by a little faster.

As expected, Lance felt a similar  _ buzz _ of boredom from other classrooms. It was now the strongest thing in the school, easily snuffing out any thrill from leaving early. That was too far away now. Hours and hours, so many minutes. They’d never survive it because, as teens, they were pros at finding things to suffer over, and suffer they did.

Which. . .wasn’t quite right.

Lance, attention fractured, suddenly snapped in on one, precise place. Pidge asked him about  _ images _ ,  _ sounds _ , corporeal things to ground Lance’s ominous  _ knowing _ . Again, there wasn’t anything like that, just a sense of  _ rightness _ , that out of all the school, he needed to watch  _ here _ and not anywhere else.

But that didn't mean he knew why--

Until he felt the unmistakable agony of his shoulders slamming back against something hard and cold and  _ metal _ .

Lance sucked in a startled breath. 

In the drowsy room, it called attention to itself, pulled eyes away from the fuzzy screen to  _ him _ , all at once, like a rubberband snap. Hunk’s hands stilled. His eyes were wide with understanding. Allura’s were pinched in concern. They said something, they had to have, but Lance was already spilling out of his desk, on his feet, and heading for the door, whatever they said lost to the sounds of his own running.

The hallways broke off, a dozen options to pick. 

There was only one way, and he knew it instinctively, his feet turning without thought behind it.

Ahead, tucked away like an after-thought, was a small cluster of dust-capped lockers. They were battered, ugly things of chipped orange paint, a haphazard gallery of vinyl stickers and sharpie graffiti. They were also positioned  _ just _ out of sight of the camera. Everyone knew it. It was a secret that wasn’t a secret because everyone abused it when the need arose.

Lance bee-lined for the very last row, slower now, keeping his steps light but still hurried.

At his sides, his hands were shaking fists.

Again, the pain came. Raw, cutting, punching out a bruise he’d never wear. The force of it staggered him; the force of it  _ happening _ gave off a muffled sound up ahead--a grunt cut off by clenched teeth. And something said in a hush, the cadence of a voice recognized but not the vile things spoken aloud.

It poisoned Lance’s emotions, turned them sticky and black.

At first, they didn’t see him standing there, arms quaking, chest heaving, anger all his own, stolen pain screaming down his arm.

It’s what made Pidge glance his way. His eyes were wide behind his glasses,  _ shocked _ , of all things, to see Lance there and then-- _ not _ there as he slashed the distance in half with long-legged strides.

Griffin had enough time to look up and catch sight of Lance’s face--briefly, contorted--before he was thrown back.

Pidge slid down the lockers. “Lance?” exploded past his lips, partially grateful, partially in wonder. He held his arm--not that he needed to. Lance had yanked the pain from it like some back alley attempt at healing. It was  _ his _ , that torment, an ache he felt down to his fingertips.

Anger, though, is what stole Lance's words.

He’d wondered, for a while now, if Pidge was hiding something. The way he skirted around certain topics, the hesitant pauses and deflection, it all pointed towards something just within reach, a thing almost said, almost confessed. Lance noticed it. He suspected Hunk noticed it, too. But they never asked, or at least, Lance didn’t, because Lance was holding back his own secrets--even if they weren’t  _ technically  _ his.

But this was different.

This was  _ pain _ , and it left  _ marks _ , physically or otherwise.

This was  _ abuse _ .

Griffin gathered himself. 

"Well, if this isn't a surprise," he said, speaking still in that low, low voice. He hid behind it like he hid between these lockers--this was something done so much it'd become a perfect little habit: How to get away with tormenting others without getting caught.

Lightly dusting off his shirt did nothing to smooth away the deep trenches of wrinkles left behind by Pidge's fingers. It made Griffin feel more in control, fixing what he could, as if a perfect facade could mask the rotten feelings rollicking inside him.

Lance felt them all, each nodule of disgust, hate, and surprise. They sank in his heart. They fueled the fire coasting down his arm.

Lance didn't think.

Months ago, while the trees in Indigo Pull were transforming into October orange and autumn yellow, Lance stood by and watched Keith--splintered with hate, eyes confessing his secret, his hands shaking from every disgusting word that'd been said--gather all his anger and direct it in a clean punch to Griffin's proud nose.

Lance's attempt wasn't like that at all.

He swung.

His knuckles ghosted across Griffin's jaw, glanced off, buried in the locker door behind him. Metal sank in its teeth; Lance hardly registered it.

"Lance!  _ Stop _ \--" Pidge grabbed him and hauled him back. And Lance went, a single step backwards, for all the good it did them.

Griffin snapped back at once. His smile, that vile, ugly thing, confessed that what Lance just did, however small, was absolutely the worst thing he could've possibly done.

"You'll regret that, you know. What? Were you thinking  _ oh, I'll be a hero _ ? Yeah, right. You can't save anyone."

The barbs didn't stick.

Lance thought of Keith first. How his broken pieces were slowly starting to reform. How, when he smiled, he  _ meant _ it. How--and this was the most important part--Keith returned his feelings. They were a single creature now,  _ KeithandLance _ ,  _ LanceandKeith _ , stitched together by love.

There was Nadia too, slowly growing, the both of them learning that they had so much more to give. Then Sylvio, his sisters, his brothers, his entire family, everyone he'd been able to touch with his Empathy and  _ heal _ , even if it was by the smallest amount. 

No matter what anyone said, Griffin the least of them, Lance knew his worth, and his worth wasn't tarnished by anything, by anyone, or by loving who he was meant to love.

Brushing Pidge back, Lance grabbed Griffin by the collar.

"Yeah? Tough shit, Grif, I already  _ have _ ."

Lance slammed  _ him _ against the lockers, like Griffin had done to Pidge. Symmetry. A profound sense of right. 

For added measure, with barely a flick of conscious effort, Lance pushed Pidge's pain into  _ his _ arm.

Then dropped him.

Griffin hit the floor, hand flying up to his shoulder, eyes growing wide. "What the hell did you  _ do _ ," he spat, and for a sickening moment Lance thought he'd been figured out. But then Griffin heaved himself back on his feet, and snarled, "You're not getting out of this, I hope you know that. You're  _ dead _ ."

Dead how?

Lance barely cared about social suicide or losing popularity. What little he had could vanish, get yanked from under his feet, and Lance would still have the safety net of his friends waiting to catch him. They, alone, were all Lance needed.

But how Griffin said it, how his emotions riled and thrashed behind the words, helped Lance understand that Griffin meant it how he said it.

Like a threat. Or a promise. Or  _ both _ .

Lance suddenly remembered how Adam was found beside his car on an early August morning, washed in strobing blue lights and his own dark blood.

He remembered the unspoken thing stretched between him and Hunk and Pidge all those months ago, days after they heard the news:  _ Adam's death looked like a hate crime. _

A hate crime.

Griffin pushed past them and ran down the hall, cradling his arm like it was barely hanging on, not just sore and hurting, heading in the same direction, just an hour ago, Allura returned from. Lance watched him disappear behind a door with sinking dread.

Pidge's face appeared in his line of sight, eyes bright, bright, bright behind his glasses. He stole Griffin's words, and the horror in them, the sick understanding, shot a thrill up Lance's spine.

"Lance, what  _ did you do _ ?"

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The day went by significantly faster after that.

Hunk found them minutes after Griffin had fled, Allura at his heels. They took one look at Lance's shaking hands and Pidge's worried expression, and their stomachs sank. For Lance, it dragged him to the floor again, his legs too weak to hold him.

_ You're dead _ , Griffin said.

It rang in his ears, punched in time to his heartbeat.

Did Griffin mean it?

Did he mean it  _ like that _ ?

He didn't have much time to wonder. As Hunk and Allura drilled them with questions-- _ "What happened!?" _ ,  _ "Where are you hurt?" _ \--the intercoms  _ blipped _ . A droning, polite voice flooded the school:

"Lance McClain, Katie Holt, please come to the office."

_ You're dead _ .

Lance got to his feet, knowing how it all looked. It would be their word against Griffin's, just like it had before. They'd been between the cover of towering lockers, out-of-sight from the cameras, during the middle of class. Lance's knuckles were starting to bruise from missing and hitting the locker. It all went against the truth, and, knowing Griffin, he'd exploit everything that twisted the story in his favor.

All they had was their private testimonies, and the painless bruises coloring up Pidge's arm.

And what good would those be?

It started exactly as Lance imagined it would.

Perfect, golden-boy Griffin spun his story, holding his hurt arm all the while like the poster child of agony. His pain sounded genuine, which was Lance's fault. He shouldn't have shoved it inside him--he hadn't even known he  _ could _ until it spilled out and left his own arm cool and weightless. But he  _ had _ , and now Griffin's arm sent out a distress-signal of aches and pains he'd have no proof existed outside of him saying so.

Pidge's arm, a motley of red-violet and blue, inspired stern looks and an escort to the nurse. 

While they waited on Pidge to return, everyone else was spoken to, even Hunk and Allura, who refused to go back to class and had followed them into the office. 

Principal Muller, a wispy-sort of man with a smile like a boomerang, told them, "This is bad business, kids. Bullying won't be tolerated."

Lance figured suspension. He  _ had _ punched Griffin in the face, or tried to, though only as a means to protect Pidge. It wasn't to start anything. It was to  _ end _ it.

The confusion of pain and bruises saved them all in the end.

Pidge's arm looked  _ hideous _ . That was the final medical verdict, chorused by the nurse herself on their return. She looked at Griffin too, found his skin tender but lacking the same black blooms Pidge wore.

"I've never seen anything like it," the nurse clucked, and even Principal Muller wore open skepticism on his face.

It all sounded fishy, despite coming from Griffin who, in their books, never told a lie. Simply put, there was nothing to go by, and with two additional witnesses--Hunk and Allura who flat out  _ lied _ and said they saw the whole thing happen--Principal Muller had to rule on the middle ground, taking neither side.

Maybe this was in part due to Allura. 

No one wanted to risk offending her and no doubt losing potential grant money to aid in school sports and remodels. Like Griffin, Allura carried a weighty name to throw around and, unlike Griffin, owned a hefty bank account under her own name. And when this was subtly mentioned, Allura took on that air instantaneously, becoming an heiress who happened to be their friend, not the other way around.

Money rules the world, afterall.

And today it tipped the scales in their favor.

Meaning, the three of them were punished. Lightly.

"Gotta keep it fair, kids. You know how it is."

No, they didn't know, but who were they to argue? Their version of  _ bad business _ had a different definition than his.

Fuming, Hunk told them, "Then you might as well punish me, too."

And Allura, standing beside him, agreed. "Technically, we both ditched class as well." Though for different reasons. "And, it would only be  _ fair _ ."

In the end, all their parents were called and all five were sent home early.

Having their parents or, in some cases, legal guardians called to fetch them, however, was when the sting set in.

One by one, they waited until their rides got there. They sat together in the small office lobby, taking up the only four offered seats. Lance, the odd one out, stood at Pidge's free side.

Griffin left first, of course. His father strode into the office with his evangelistic airs, booming voice, and southern sweetness. There were handshakes, calling everyone by their  _ Christian _ names, and a jovial mood all around despite the rather ugly situation.

"Boys will get into scuffs, Ed, there's no gettin' around that." Then a laugh like a thunder boom. Hunk and Lance exchanged wry looks. "Now, I don't suppose I need to worry about any matter of records. . .?"

Lance never had the grace to sense Mr. Griffin's emotions before. Effortlessly sweet and deeply rooted in wells of kindheartedness, these emotions sat like mishappened clumps of disintegrating sugar cubes. That is to say, they were an act, so thoroughly done that he almost had himself--and  _ Lance _ \--fooled.

Mr. Muller smiled his boomerang smile. "Of course not."

Hunk left next. His departure was quieter, free of guilt, and full of exchanged hugs. "Text me when you all get back home," he said, as his parting words. His mother gave them all a smile that was honey-smooth and made of genuine sincerity, and gently guided Hunk out the door.

Soon after, Coran strode into the office area. Lance was immediately disappointed to find he was dressed plainly, in clothes meant for cleaning or laundry days, not the full glimmering military dress he wore at Halloween. Which was a pity. Lance would've liked to see the look on Muller's face when Coran showed up in army olive.

Coran bypassed speaking to the Principal again. "One phone call's enough," he stage-whispered for Lance and Pidge's benefit. "I suppose I ought to be reprimanding you for getting in trouble, is that right? Yes, yes. Sully on you, you know better, yadda yadda. Now!" He clapped his hands, drawing that show to an abrupt close. His candy eyes were alight with, and Lance could confirm this, pride. "Did you get a good  _ one-two _ in, Allura?"

The receptionist loudly cleared her throat.

Coran straightened. "Oh, well, I need to know for. . .for the severity of her punishment! Right? Yes, yes, right, of course. Allura, be a dear, and fill me in on  _ everything _ on the drive home."

The woman scowled at him, not fooled.

Lance and Pidge muffled their laughter as best as they could behind their hands.

Allura grinned at the two of them, her pretty face matching Coran's expression in its playful mischief. Lance saw the resemblance then, how they could be blood-related, ignoring their polar-opposite looks.

"I won't spare a single detail," she promised, then rose to her feet. She held Lance's face between her palms, and looked at him, just looked at him, as the silliness faded from her face. She did the same to Pidge, his glasses askance against her fingers, and asked them both, "You're sure you're both alright?"

"Yeah. Fine," Lance told her. 

Pidge lifted up his shoulders. "Could be worse."

Allura sighed. Her eyes fell to his shoulder, her light brows coming together in a knot. "Yes. I suppose everything  _ could _ be worse."

She dropped her hands.

Lance watched this silent conversation stretch out, and heard it for what it was, crystalline in its clarity.

Pidge kicked him when Allura left. "Not a word," he snapped.

Lance flopped into the now-vacant seat beside him and said, "If it wasn't already apparent, I'm on  _ your _ side, buddy, ease up."

Pidge made a noise in the back of his throat. "Still."

Lance glanced at him. He sensed other things, vying for Pidge's attention, and asked, "What?"

There was a short pause before Pidge caved. "I wish you wouldn't have done that."

With the receptionist in mind, who was undoubtedly eavesdropping, Lance chose his words carefully. "To be fair, I didn't mean to."

Pidge looked at him, and Lance looked back. There were so many things to say, thank you's and explanations, but it'd all have to wait for later, when they could speak privately.

For the time being, Lance reached over and patted Pidge's knee, and told him, damn anyone who could hear, "I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

His tone left no room to misinterpret. Of all things, Lance's strength lay in his endless reserve of love for his friends.

Pidge knew that.

And if he didn't, then Lance made it a point, like he had made it a point when he was with Keith, to alter his choices, to make sure each one counted towards a better life for all of them, so Pidge--or Hunk, or Allura--never doubted how much they meant to him.

When his mother finally arrived--as fast as she was able, bless that old farm truck's heart, it wasn't as young as it used to be--she apologized to the office workers on his behalf. Her gray eyes were sad, and deeper in, disappointment held a soft fist around her heart. She only knew the stories told over the phone, and there was no telling how Mr. Muller spun his spiderweb tale to sound.

Lance shrunk away from it, well-deserved or not, and rose from his seat. Pidge bumped his hand in farewell, and  _ his _ emotions poked out from their neat little boxes, chary glimpses of guilt and apology.

His mother didn't say anything until they got in the truck. It was worse that way, having to shoulder her disappointment in him the entire way in silence. 

"Listen,  _ mamá _ \--"

The cracked vinyl seats groaned as her weight shifted across the elongated bench. Lance inexplicably found his face against her chest and tears in his eyes, their bodies canted forward, brought together in a mess of arms and hands.

"Oh,  _ mijo _ ," she sighed. "When will you learn?" She withdrew. He hands caught his face, her thumbs swiping across every freckle captured in his cheeks. "You can't fight every battle as your own."

He stared at her. "But, this was about  _ Pidge _ . Are you saying you'd rather me just stand around and let him get bullied? I  _ can't _ . I  _ won't _ ."

"No, I'm not saying that."

Her hands radiated warmth. Everything about her was always warmth and comfort.

Except the disappointment she held captive in her heart. 

Lance searched her face, her ocean eyes, and the rest of her that he couldn't see with sight alone.

"Then what are you saying?"

She dropped her hands. The truck heaved and coughed but eventually found enough inspiration to get up and go. Indigo Pull slowly streaked by, a dreary palette of grays and browns and so many dead trees. 

They went back home the long way, taking the vein-like network of backroads that all, inevitably, lead them back to the farm.

And though they had all that extra time, they sat there in silence, and she never explained what she meant.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


One a.m. woke Lance up with a sharp, thrilling noise emitting from his bedside table. Sleep-dulled and confused, he stared at his lamp for all of three-second before snatching his phone up.

A number pulled across the screen, a patternless, faceless unidentified caller. Lance frowned and declined it, then set his phone back down, too tired to be spooked. Even for a wrong number, it was a little off-putting so early in the morning but nothing, he thought, to worry about.

With the day he'd had, he didn't spare much curiosity for it. He wanted to sleep, so sleep he did.

He closed his eyes, and the moment he did, his phone chirped again, only once, and silenced.

A voicemail.

Or a text.

He woke up a little more.

Lance slid his phone back into his palm. The screen brightened under his touch, an image of Keith's sleeping face momentarily brought to life, and Lance tapped the notification bar slashed across the bridge of Keith's nose.

It was the same number.

The first three digits confessed it was local, but the two-word text,  _ you up _ , gave no insight on who it might be.

Frowning, Lance responded,  _ who is this??? _

He waited.

The reply didn't come from his phone but from  _ inside  _ him.

Lance jumped to his feet.

Leveraging his fingers beneath the cracked window, he hurled it up and leaned out into the crisp air of late December. The farm was bathed in the undisturbed indigo of just-after midnight, night so true the feeble halo off the porchlight did nothing to disturb it. Shadows cast off the trees were skeletal, all finger and leg bones. The lawn, from what Lance could see of it, glittered, crusted with a coat of frost dazzling enough to be dusted diamond. The air smelled like dreams do--cool, uncertain, and full of wicked potential.

Lance had the unsettling thought that if monsters truly existed--real ones, murderous ones, ones created to kill and nothing else; the kind Keith always tried to say he was but wasn't--they would exist in this very moment, claiming the terse seconds between now and dawn.

He braced his hands against the windowsill, body caught halfway between these two worlds, the warm reality of home and the endless, haunted possibility of Indigo Pull once the sun went down.

Down the driveway, past where he was able to see clearly, hidden in those deeply drenched shadows, footsteps crunched up the gravel. They weren't hurried, and why would they be? Lance's phone let off another shrill toning of bells where it lay on his bed, discarded.

His heart knew better than his mind, and it chased away any inkling of fear. With a hand cupped around his mouth, Lance called into the night, "Not cool, you jerk!"

And just like that, the spell over the farm shattered.

The shadows weren't anything other than whip-thin branches twitching from the wind. The porchlight bloomed further out, caught halfway down the sloping driveway on a ruffle of true-black hair. The scuffling, slow steps Lance heard were actually hasty ones made by a pair of ratty Chucks and the boy jammed inside them.

The number on Lance's phone, that mysterious caller who ambled up the yard, was none other than Keith.

Keith stopped in front of the air unit right under Lance's bedroom window, one hand lifted in an apologetic wave. In his other hand, he clutched the slim black box of a smartphone. He was both pleased and sorry to be there, which was to say, not very sorry at all for giving Lance an undue fright and incredibly pleased to see Lance awake.

Lance whooped when he saw the phone. He slapped his hands over the windowsill and Keith's quiet 'sorry'. "Hold up! You got a  _ phone _ now!"

Keith shrugged his shoulders up. "You'd have known that if you'd answered my call."

"Okay, one! Who calls someone at one in the morning anyway? Like, I get it, you're on your vampire schedule, but  _ some _ of  _ us  _ need beauty sleep!"

Keith lifted his phone. The light off the screen illuminated his frown. "Oh. I didn't realize how late it was. . ."

"Two!" Lance barreled on. "You could've clarified more in your text! What you sent is the exact thing a creep would send someone!"

". . .I guess you get points on that one. I wanted to surprise you."

"Surprise  _ had _ , congrats, pick up your winner's t-shirt at the desk. And,  _ three _ \--" Keith shot him a look. "--are you coming up here or not because it is  _ literally _ freezing outside, and I'm at my quota for leaning out of windows for the night."

Keith rocked his weight between his feet. His brows did that thing where they collided and made his entire face sad. Lance straightened up at once.

"What is it," he asked, quieted.

"I. . ." There came a pause, in which Keith warred inside himself, flipping from doubt straight into an iron-strong resolve. "Actually, I wanted to see if you'd come with me." The phone screen flashed again, Keith's eyes a violet sunrise in the glow. They were tilted and half-lidded, and Lance didn't need a single breath of Empathy to know what caused this sudden heartache.

Only one thing ever made Keith look--made him  _ feel _ \--like that.

Lance pushed back into his room. "Hold on a second," he said, "Let me grab a jacket. I'll meet you out on the porch."

He shut the window, chopping Keith's soft, "Thank you," clean in half. 

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


As with most things during the dead of night, the way to the graveyard felt backwards, elongated and barely familiar, a caricature of big, looping streets pocked with weak-eyed streetlamps and blank-faced houses. Moonless, the way was pitch black outside of the few street lights they came across, and Lance relied on Keith's catlike eyes and the strong vice of his hand to lead them in the right direction. They made slow progress thanks to Lance's unsure feet, but Keith didn't complain, and they kept up a small vein of conversation to keep them warm besides.

"Look at you," Lance said early on, voice a whisper, as if he, alone, could wake an entire city if he spoke too loud. "Baby's got a new phone. How'd that happen? Details, Keith. I always want details."

Lance didn't ask why Keith needed to visit the graveyard tonight of all nights, though he wondered about it. Keith didn't bring it up, not verbally, and Lance decided the better use of his time would be to mollify that hurt rather than make it any worse. As for his own bad day, Lance kept it to himself. There'd be time enough after for him to explain it. For now, he focused on Keith's hurting, while doing his best to ignore the haunting echo of his mother's warning:  _ You can't fight every battle as your own. _

Keith didn't laugh as Lance hoped, but he earned what struck like a smile against his gift: Gold lines, narrow and straight, not a twist or turn in them.

"It's an early Christmas present from Shiro. Apparently, he's been helping Iverson all that time he's been going to the station. With the cleaning, and paperwork stuff, organizing everything. That sort of thing. Iverson paid him under the table for it."

Their shoes punched across the grass in satisfying crunches as the wind cajoled them forward, past the low stone fence, carrying the scent of the distant river along with it, all chill and ice. Lance tightened his scarf. Beside him, Keith drew in a small, quick breath. He hadn't bothered with a coat or mittens. He didn't need to.

"I always thought he was a jerk," Lance mused. 

"He's actually a pretty nice guy. I've known him all my life though. Because of Shiro. And Adam. And. . ." His voice dropped off. 

There might've been another name to go with that list, once. The hungry night devoured it whole, taking every syllable before Keith had a chance to say it.

Lance wove his gloved fingers between Keith's bare ones. The heat from Keith's palm warmed him down to his fingertips.

"Do you need to do this alone," Lance asked, glancing at the side of Keith's face. A lonely street light shone blue as a star at the entrance, and it rolled over what Lance could see of him, redrawing Keith into a boy of blue-white skin and endless shadow--a boy made out of frost. "I can wait at the fence, if you need me to."

Grieving was a private thing. Sometimes, you wanted someone to stand beside you during the worst of it. Sometimes, it was the slow walk through it that needed the company, not the ugly thing that followed after, or came before.

Keith held on to Lance's hand, and without a word, he pulled him up the hill, weaving past all the graves that stretched between them and the one Keith came here for. It was more of an answer than if he'd said  _ yes _ out loud.

In the dark, the graves were formless, wordless, stones scattered in the field. A fair few had solar powered lights stuck on either side, but this late, their chambers held embers, not flames, nothing to help Lance guess how far they'd come or how far they needed to go. Ghostly impressions of fake flowers shifted in the breeze. Lance saw the promise of wreaths leaned against some, heavy crimson bows glued to their faux-pine needles. A few graves had offerings of wrapped gifts, some done in silver, some freckled with blue snowflakes, and others as green as the memory of spring. Some plots bore the attentive hands of grievers; others were overrun with neglect.

Lance blinked. He squinted, peering quietly around him. More things started to take shape. Names appeared like magic on the headstones, dates, patinated lockets closed to the elements. Every blade of grass stood tall, sharp as blades. Keith's face held so much sorrow it carved him brand new. 

Why did Lance think he was made of frost before? It went deeper than that, truer than that: He was ice, in its purest form.

Keith halted. 

Grief was an avalanche, a tropical storm, a forest fire--something that, once started, grew until it destroyed everything in its wake.

Lance stared at the grave, its careful decor and manicured plot, and shut his eyes. It didn't matter. Even from behind his lids, Lance clearly read the name, the date, and puzzled over why he could see it now when, before, he'd been stumbling blind.

Keith's voice, when he finally spoke again, was the only sound for miles.

"Happy Birthday, Dad," he told the grave. 

That was all there was to say.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Time felt suspended, halted, an unexpected gift. Unhurried, hearts equally heavy, Lance led Keith away from the graveyard once the first tellings of dawn breathed around the mountains--the crisp, unforgiving blue of a clear sky--and deeper into town.

He had no real destination in mind, and so they wandered the city in the gloom of early morning, skirting around the few signs of people waking or leaving they came across. For a little while longer, Lance wanted to pretend they were alone. It was easy to imagine, quiet as it was, dark as it was, cold as it was.

Indigo Pull was their own personal ghost town. And they, as they walked quietly from street to street, were its ghosts.

Neighborhoods slumbered, each one a different, many-headed beast. They tiptoed cautiously around trash cans huddled against the curbside, plucked over drifting wads of old newspapers cutting across the road, fled dawning porch lights and startled floodlights. They followed Main Street, passed every drowsing shop and bleary neon sign, and all the dozing artifacts locked behind their glass windows. Even the strings of Christmas lights slept, little bulbs dark spots lining doorways and storefronts and eaves. 

All the while, Keith held onto Lance's hand and his own aching heart. And Lance held him back, with his fingers and attentiveness, and led him away from the graveyard on the hill.

The river found them before they found the river.

First, in the slow sounds of its rushing waters, then in the gradual drop towards the stone-speckled embankment. Lance's shoes, slicked with dew and frost-melt, skidded on the smooth rocks, and he nearly overstepped and dunked his feet right into the water. Keith, quick to react, hooked his arm around his waist and neatly picked him up. There was a delirious moment of momentum, the pressure of Keith’s hands, then Lance found himself back where he started, feet planted firmly on the road. Keith stood beside him, his hands already sliding back, falling limply at his sides, and it was as if Lance imagined the entire thing.

Lance squinted down at the rocks. “Thanks,” he said.

“It’s nothing.”

The same nothing that saved him once before, Lance decided. Still, he appreciated it. Wet socks were an absolute torture to endure.  _ Cold _ , wet socks were probably something reserved specifically for the most damned souls in Hell.

He wiggled his very warm toes thankfully. He said, “Have you been practicing your throws?”

Keith eyed the water. “Some.”

“Show me.”

Keith showed him.

Significantly more balanced on his feet, Keith stepped down the bank, plucking up stones as he went. For Lance, all the rocks looked the same, blobs of gray or darker gray or coal black. But once Keith gathered a heavy handful, and split the spoils evenly between them, Lance felt smooth edges and knew they were all perfect for skipping.

Whatever magic he had in the graveyard--if it was that--had left as suddenly and as quietly as it came.

Keith picked a stone from his share, christened the smoothest side with a quick rub, then snapped out his arm. 

Lance heard it skip across the water’s surface, once and twice and six times before the river swallowed it up. Ripples shook across the feeble light of morning, shattering the still illusion of blue-turning-pink.  _ That _ Lance could see, only because of his own eyes, however weak they were, not from anything else.

“Not bad, not bad. You really  _ have  _ practiced. I thought you were lying.”

Keith’s eyes were endlessly black, much as the fading night around them. “Why would I lie about that?”

Lance tossed a stone up, and luck let him catch it again. He tossed it towards the river, listened to it skip with intense satisfaction. “Why would you practice?”

“In case you asked me to come with you again.”

There it was. That night felt so long ago, uprooted from a different era, a start of something new. Looking back on it now, it was obvious. But living it, Lance was only aware of the weight of the picture in his bag, and how it grew heavier the longer he and Keith spent at the riverside. 

It’d been hotter then, summer bleeding into the first cooling nights of fall. The sun had already set, not started to rise. They were living the same moment in a mirrored image, and it struck Lance as a little ironic but also like it shouldn't happen any other way.

Keith tossed another stone. It skipped further out, further than Marco could get it, further than was possible. It sounded like the stone made it halfway across the river before it exhausted and fell.

Lance palmed another of his stones. “I want you to know that might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard in my entire life.”

“It’s dumb? How?”

Lance waved aside his worry, his confusion, little things compared to the rest of his emotions. They flitted away, uncurled, transformed into the beginnings of amusement. “Dumb in a good way, not a bad way. Like, I didn’t think you cared that much about it. Stone skipping, I mean.”

His attempt fell after four skips, but, hey, as Lance was doing it nearly blind, he thought that was a pretty solid effort.

“I don’t,” Keith replied. “Not really. But you do. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

There came a pause, heavy with something that wanted to be said. Lance glanced over at him, studied how soft the light touched him, and wondered, in a distant way, if it hurt him any, even like this.

“Go on,” Lance prompted.

Keith hummed. He tossed a stone up, caught it, tossed it, caught it. Then it sailed out of his hand and, lacking any  _ finesse _ , plummeted into the water. “It wasn’t. . . “ He halted, fixed his mouth to the side, started again, “It wasn’t like I had much to do anyway. It made the night go by faster. It gave me something to focus on. Something to  _ do _ .”

Lance understood. Everything was just starting to come together the last time they did this. Shiro still lived with the Holt’s, and Keith stayed with him in that same borrowed room. And Adam--

Lance let out a breath.

_ A hate crime _ .

_ You're dead _ .

This time Keith turned to him and asked, “What?”

Lance balanced between telling him everything about the day and swallowing it down. Worries, fears, they all popped to the surface, within easy reach, all he had to do was  _ start _ .

Keith waited, stones heavy in his hands.

Lance watched him back, debating, weighing his options.

And then remembered something else, something he never told Keith about the day of Adam's funeral.

He didn’t have a reason for not saying it before, only that it didn’t come up, and he tried to avoid situations where it might. Was there any benefit in knowing that he’d seen Adam’s ghost at his own funeral? If there was, Lance hadn’t figured it out, and he kept it to himself to spare stabbing at old, open wounds.

Keith said again, “Something’s bothering you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Lance puffed out a breath. “It’s. . .well, I was gonna say  _ odd _ , but I don’t suppose that’s really surprising when it comes to the two us, huh?” He worried a thumbnail over one of the stones, buying time. Keith, as always, waited patiently while Lance figured out what to say. “. . .I saw him--Adam. After his funeral.”

Keith lit up in shock, in wonder. The two were a funny thing, intermingled as they were. "You. . . _ saw _ him?"

"Well. . .his  _ legs _ ." Lance flicked out another stone. "And I didn't know it at the time. Actually, I only know  _ now _ because Shiro has this picture of them in his room--"

"Their engagement photo," Keith interjected. Not to clarify for Lance's sake, but his own growing awareness. "The white suit."

"The white suit," Lance agreed. 

"I always thought--" Keith stalled, changed gears. "Did--did he say anything?"

It was the expected question. Lance answered it gently. "Nah. He just. . .walked outside. Or tried to. When he got to the door, his steps stopped and I blacked out." Lance had one stone left--he spun it in his hands, the sharp edges snagging the cotton of his gloves. "I didn't really understand what was going on. It was when my. . .my empathy stuff started up, like literally a few days before it I woke up because my hands felt like they were broken, so, like, everything was kinda messy back then."

Keith dropped his rocks.

Shock dropped in both their stomachs.

Lance turned towards him and found Keith staring across the river, at the brightening stripe of the horizon.

"What--"

"When?"

Lance frowned. "Keith. It's not--"

"That was  _ me _ ." He turned towards him suddenly, empty hands out, offered, though any scuffed knuckles had long since healed. "I caused that."

Lance already knew.

Gently, he touched his hands to Keith's, thought better of it and shucked off his mittens before doing it again. Keith's skin was warm,  _ alive _ , heat that chased away the biting cold.

He said, "I know."

Keith looked at him, expression hard to read, his emotions an easy tell. Lance squeezed his fingers.

"I noticed at the diner," Lance admitted. Talking about it, thinking about it, drew up all those old butterfly-flighty nerves again. Like this was the first time they'd spoken. The first time he dared to hold his hand. "Your knuckles were bruised pretty bad."

_ And already healing _ , though it didn't need to be said.

Keith stared at their fingers. He was still that wild storm inside, and this new thing did nothing to calm it. Lance doubted anything would, except time and his own coaxing.

And then, maybe not even with that.

Slowly, Lance inched their hands flat, fingers straight, reaching upwards. Keith's fingers were shorter than his, but his palm was longer, so, compared like this, their hands could be mistaken as nearly the same size.

"Can I try something?"

Keith's eyes slid up to his face, and he gently inclined his head. He didn't ask what, or pull tight in curiosity inside. There  _ was _ trust, that golden thing, precious as smiles or laughter or love.

Lance closed his eyes.

He didn't know exactly what he wanted to achieve or how to achieve it. He couldn't heal outright--he was beginning to understand that was impossible. You can't erase a wound entirely; they leave scars, and if not scars, memories of pain, and if not memories, then an instinct to avoid anything that caused hurt. Emotions were the same except more stubborn, more deeply rooted. People clung to their emotions because they were safe and familiar, even if they were bad ones, even if it only hurt them more in the end.

Keith held on to his grief with unmoving fists.

The night pulled it into focus, sharpened it, breathed new, endless life inside it. Lance, with his weeks of practice, saw it with understanding eyes.

"Keith," he said, and Keith's feelings surged and twitched, gold and gold and gold. "You can't keep holding on to it like this."

Gold went blue. Lines tangled, a tense scribble of black static inside his heart. Lance told it that it shouldn't become that, that it didn't  _ need _ to, that for all the good it thought it did to protect him, it only made things worse.

Keith's voice hung heavy between them, "It's all I have left."

The rest, unsaid, was this:  _ If I lose this, I lose  _ him.

People were creatures of self-destructive habit.

Lance folded their fingers together again, imagining other feelings to fill the spot reserved for Keith's misery.  _ Happiness _ , yes, and its stronger cousin  _ joy _ , and others, a blend of everything his own father felt towards him--proud, relentlessly loved.

Things Texas Kogane surely had felt for Keith.

Death was unavoidable. Grieving the dead was too. But so was  _ remembering _ . And so was loving something lost.

"Tell me about him."

_ There _ came the bemusement, subtle and sweet. Lance opened his eyes and found Keith frowning at the lightening sky.

But as with most things--like with skipping stones and using the window instead of the door, their running laps around Indigo Pull, and a hundred other little things--Keith, after taking one, single look at Lance, gave in.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


They walked back to the apartment as they spoke, with the sky turning into a pink, orange and violet fire above their heads. 

Meaning  _ Keith _ spoke. Lance gave him the entire distance between the river and home to fill with memories of his dad, and fill them Keith did.

They were old things, these memories, a bit dusty from staying up too long on the shelves, and Keith realized he forgot bits, little things like the color of a shirt or if he was wearing shoes at the time. Nothing to hurt the meaning of it, or ruin it entirely, just enough that Keith started to worry that he was going to forget everything if he didn't start allowing himself time to remember.

"Dad used to love fishing, hunting, all of that. If you could've seen our house--" 

Lance must've sensed the dual way talking about it made him feel, because Keith felt the touch of his attention alongside it, whittling away at the bad stuff. A little weird, once he knew what it was, but more comforting than anything else. 

"--we had taxidermy deer heads on the walls, those plastic-y looking fish on plaques. Not a  _ lot _ , but there was this one by the door, it was just a pair of mounted antlers, right? I can't remember who started it first, but we ended up using it as as key rack." He recalled streamers of lanyards dripping off the points, ribbons of colors and clattering keys. He found it didn't hurt to smile about it. 

"Were any of them yours," Lance asked. Their hands were between them, cupped and laced, Lance's naked fingers cool against his.

"The keys?"

Lance laughed. " _ No _ . The deer! Or the fish."

"Yeah, some. Mostly the fish. Well, okay,  _ one _ fish," he corrected when Lance shot him a look, one composed of raised brows and a knowing smirk. "Okay, it already isn't that impressive, and now it's even  _ less _ impressive with you doing that."

"And you think  _ I'm _ some world-class fisher?  _ Please _ . I can't even hook the worms." He laughed at that, too, and the sensation of it knocked Keith in the chest, like it was  _ his _ laughter, not Lance's. "I still want to hear about it. Details, Keith--"

"You want to hear all the details, I know. All the boring details of a tiny, mounted bass? Whatever you want." Keith meant it in a sarcastic way. How it ended up sounding was awfully sincere--which, they both knew, it was. "I caught it one day all three of us had gone to the river. Not far, actually, from the bridge. Dad always said something about how the stones there made good hiding places for 'the big ones'. He had a special spot and everything--no, I mean it, he said it every time we went there, 'this is the greatest fishing hole in the entire town, boys.'"

Unconsciously, he mimicked his dad's rough way of speaking, the grit in his throat when he said certain words, how  _ g _ 's simply wouldn't stick to anything.

He didn't need to look at Lance's face to know he was smiling (though he did, and he was).

"Sounds like something my dad would say," Lance admitted. "And  _ exactly _ how he would say it."

This time,  _ both _ of them laughed, however small on Keith's part, however loudly on Lance's.

Keith told him about the day--how the river was swarmed with bugs and how the weeds controlled the banks, thigh-high and thick. "The mosquitoes ate me alive," he said. It felt impossible now, during the heart of winter, not a bug in sight. Even the moths were absent, the sinking moon abandoned, loveless, and lonely. 

Shiro was there, whole and young, a good three years before he signed his life away on a slip of paper and boarded a plane for the East. The brothers were set to the task of grabbing all the bags and coolers and fold-up chairs from the pickup truck; their dad dragged three separate fishing poles down to the waterside, marking the spot where they'd set up shop. The chairs were opened and placed--their dad's in the middle, a son to either side. The coolers opened--full of ice and shining, silver cans, some for the boys, some explicitly  _ not _ . The sun was unforgivingly hot. It bounced off the water in shards of molten light.

Keith remembered the sticky heat, and how, the next morning, he jerked awake in agony, his arms and shoulders burnt red-raw.

It was a day stitched together with loud conversation and the occasional fish. Of them all, Shiro had best mastered the patience fishing required, and it rewarded him with the largest, most interesting catches. Though he tried, and though he loved the sport of fishing, Texas had his youngest son's restless attitude, and constantly cast and recast his line after several minutes had passed without a bite.

Keith admitted to Lance he often gave up after his second try, and ran the length of the river and back again, while his father and Shiro drank from their beer-or-soda cans and eyed the water. For whatever reason--and here was another small thing Keith forgot, the reason  _ why _ \--he stayed in his seat and actually  _ tried _ . 

Oh, the fish was a terrible creature of dull, green scales and a wide, gasping mouth. Some pathetic thing Indigo Pull sent his way out of pity, not reward. But this Keith did remember, fully, down to every lined detail of his dad's face: When Keith reeled in his tiny bass, his father grinned so wide the moon took inspiration, and, that night, both Texas and the sky wore matching, proud smiles.

It followed naturally they wanted to immortalize the moment. Keith protested, said it was a waste of time, but his dad wouldn't hear anything of it. Shiro sided with him, at least on this, so Keith's little bass was hung on the wall, like a straight-A report card or a school photograph. Like it was something worth celebrating.

"Where is it now," Lance asked, after the story was told.

They darted into the apartment just in time: The sun had climbed higher as they walked, the gentle sunrise fire now a blaze of gold. Keith skirted around pools of sunlight drenching the living room floor, fleeing for the dark safety of his room. Lance followed him, avoiding the sunshine too, even though he was a creature made for it, not avoiding it.

"Lost. Like everything in the house." Keith kicked off his boots, flung them against his bedside table in careless abandon.

Lance shrugged off his coat. "You lost everything?"

Keith flopped down on the bed. "Pretty much," he said, and this was when the pain started to rise again. Lance sat beside him, casually close, their legs touching. The rush of relief Keith felt was immediate. "I think Shiro has some things in storage. I never asked."

"Why not? You should."

He should. He wanted to. And he knew, without a doubt, he would never bring it up. Keith could talk about his old life, his old things, that stupid fish, but if he  _ saw _ them--well, that just made the past a very real, very awful thing.

Not awful because it had been awful, just awful that he had lost it, nearly all of it, in such a short amount of time.

"Maybe." To say anything else would be to lie, and Lance would know it in an instant. "Hey--are you staying?" A funny thing to ask, now that Lance had made himself comfortable on the bed, and shed off his coat and shoes. He looked like he was going to. And Keith found he didn't want him to go.

Lance thumped a hand against his chest. Keith, knowing it was coming, caught it and held it there.

His eyes went soft, just like his smile, just like the warm skin of his hand.

"Well, when you put it like  _ that _ ," Lance nodded his head at Keith's chest so the meaning was clear. "I guess it'd be rude to say no."

"I'd offer to walk you home, if you wanted, but--"

"Yeah, for once in three weeks the weather decided to be  _ gorgeous _ . What a waste." And then Lance was laughing, and because he was, so was Keith, and since they were stupid and not thinking and loud, Shiro woke up chuckling, too.

Lance mimed sealing a zipper across his mouth. No relief came. If Lance was trying to silence his mirth, he failed entirely. Keith could  _ feel _ it, like one could feel a breeze rolling across their skin, something that was alive and uncontained, a force all its own.

But as it was a good feeling, no one in the apartment minded, even Shiro, who chalked up the good mood to a good night's rest and an excellently brewed cup of coffee.

Keith thought, for not the first time, and certainly not the last,  _ He's incredible _ . 

He wondered, as he always wondered, if Lance was even aware of it.

That night started off morosely, as dark as the night they'd walked beneath, and now, in the softest way possible, Keith rivaled the sun in warmth.

Oh, the bitter things were still there--the stars don't vanish when the sun comes up, only hide behind its brighter rays--but they were quieted, for the moment.

Keith would take a moment over nothing at all.

Lance withdrew his hand, placed it elsewhere, his tanned fingers sliding down Keith's scalp with delicious slowness. And Keith knew that, if they could stay like this, together, touching and smiling and maybe something more, that'd he'd have more good moments to look forward to with Lance doing what Lance did best:

Being himself.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

Veronica, for as long as she could remember, always kept journals. 

Personal journals. Bullet journals. Journals reserved for her dreams. They were as varied as the entries inside them. Slim books for note-taking and list-making, wider ones with narrow-lined pages for her daily life. And for the gifted diaries, spiral notebooks, soft-backed composition books, those became the ones to house her dreams--the scattered prophecies that came to her while she slept.

Time was never linear in dreams. Time  _ wasn't _ linear at all. It never rushed, it never shouted, it never filled up more space than it had to. For years, Veronica believed she dreamed only what would happen days or weeks later, not too far ahead and never backwards, and for a while, that was true. 

But then her dreams became densely packed with family members she didn't know. A rough-edged sister. A squalling baby brother. A gifted niece and a quiet nephew. Veronica dreamed of family outings that wouldn't happen for years, glimpsed small futures of Christmases and Thanksgiving dinners and of what she'd wrap for birthday gifts. Though she had years before she'd meet them and know them and grow with them, Veronica loved them first.

She knew Rachel before a hint of her existed in their mother's belly. And Lance--she told their mother all about a boy with skinned-knees and scratched hands who laughed just like she did. Veronica wrote down his secrets before they were secrets at all. 

"And who's this little boy you like to talk about so much," teased her mother.

Veronica named him, "Lance." Then, softer, "My brother."

It stuck, the name. Maria McClain carried it like a piece of polished jet with her wherever she went. When Veronica used to catch her smiling over dinner, a hand placed absently against her flat stomach, it was obvious what was on her mind. The crying baby was years away, the date never sure. He'd arrive sometime in summer, marking the end of a lengthy drought, and his first, red-face cry would crack the sky like an egg.

And so it had.

Because she'd dreamed it, and Veronica's dreams were never wrong. 

That morning, she woke up shivering from December's chill. Frost clung to the glass of her window, sparkled over the lawn down below. She stared at it blankly. A journal lay open under her hands, smudged with ink and hasty words. Her fingertips were blue.

Her dreams were once again about summer. Shimmering heat above blacktop roads. Blackberries sagging in their bushes, fattened to bursting. The river swarmed with mosquito clouds, its banks muddied and choked with wild flowers, weeds, and the angle of a badly bent arm.

Blood soaked the dirt black.

She woke before she saw anything else. The ripe haunt of her dream weighed in her stomach, the uncertainty of what she'd seen. Who was dying by the river? Why? And when would it happen--or had it already?

Veronica closed her eyes.

Lately her dreams broke their own rules. She started dreaming about the past as much as the future, and sometimes she saw things that happened within hours. Mundane things, like what was for breakfast, or the weather for that afternoon, or a single photographed image of the living room as she'd find it once she headed downstairs. It was all a little concerning, and Veronica didn't know what it meant, if her abilities were growing or changing entirely.

She drummed her fingers against the pages of her notebook. The paragraph she jotted down turned her stomach to read.

No one liked dreaming about the dead, or the dying.

Especially if those dreams came true.

A quiet knock sounded from her door.

Snapping the journal closed, Veronica called, "Come in," as she slid it back in its place, alongside the others.

It was no surprise that Rachel stood there, framed in the shadows from the hall. 

It was what she held that brought Veronica to her feet.

In her dream, the body, what she could see of it, wore a dark, long-sleeved shirt.

Rachel, her hands shaking, held the same exact one.

"V?"

Their eyes met over it.

"Get rid of it," Veronica said. "Make sure it can't make its way back."

Not the shirt, the  _ dream _ .

Rachel dug her fingers into the fabric, twisting it into the lines of her own worry. "But who was it? Me--?"

They looked, suddenly and together, in perfect understanding, at the wall. But really, they looked past it, through it, and they imagined someone else, someone that picked both their closets when the fancy struck him.

Her dreams always came true.

Veronica said again, "Get rid of it." Then, fiercer, "Burn it."

If she had a say in it, this dream would be the first that wouldn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW! I did NOT think I was going to get this up in time, ha! I will say I'm getting low-keyed stressed because we're catching up to the chapter I'm working on now. Still chapter 29, because I deviated and started working on another project, so that's on me. Not only that, but I broke my finger a few weeks ago, so, for the most part, I'm stuck to writing on my phone. WE HAVE FUN HERE, DON'T WE??
> 
> Anyway!! Thanks everyone for your comments and kudos! Getting those alert emails really makes my day! Y'all are the knees ;^;


	21. Chapter 21

Indigo Pull soon fell under a confusion of seasons.

Though Christmas-time at its peak, the clouds remained stubborn in regards to snow, and warm, western winds pushed the cold to more northern parts of the state, where they surely suffered a generous heaping of sleet, ice, and those otherwise wintry set-backs. But here, in the valley, the befuddled trees slowly started blooming, encouraged by this false sense of spring. Fresh little buds, speckles of green and yellow, orchid and blue, dusted the valley in a pointillism relief. And the rain--it fell down in torrents, bloated the river high, and slipped a heavy blanket of humidity over the town whenever it let up, which wasn't often, if the flooding riverbanks could speak for themselves.

As the old saying went: Indigo Pull liked to drink its winters.

And, as a smaller known, quite newer addition to the above: Much to the absolute disappointment of its residents.

Namely, one Lance McClain, who loved snow as much as he did the rain and the sunshine, but who had a significantly lesser chance of it due to the unagreeable climate of his home. And this year it was proving to be _ extremely _ unagreeable.

Only a week and a couple of days had passed since the late night winter wonder Lance and Keith spent at the riverside. That had been a night of frost, of cold, of red noses and cheeks and chilly fingers. It had also been the last night as such since. If a season might be a lost lover, Lance reckoned he might’ve pined for it. But then, as Pidge pointed out, poets often liked to fall in love with the moon, so who was to stop him from writing love letters to winter?

Only himself. 

And maybe a severe lack of commitment.

So the days became sticky and green and muddy and wet. The temperatures rose past the comfortable range for December. Lance forgot what coats were for, and why anyone ever bothered buying gloves.

The upside--and it _ was _ a great thing--was Keith was able to leave the house more during the afternoons, and join the little group of them, whether it be just to circle Indigo Pull in lengthy walks, or tempt the puddle garden beneath all the swing sets and slides of the local park. He could come over more, which Keith often did regardless.

Despite having a phone, Keith preferred sneaking over, and all the mud and rain didn’t stop him from climbing through Lance’s window when the feeling struck. Sometimes he sent Lance a warning via text. Sometimes Lance got the hint from sensing his reaching emotions sliding through the cracked window before him. Sometimes, Lance woke in a fold of warm arms, and promptly fell back to sleep, lulled by Keith's even breathing and drowsy emotions.

All-in-all, it wasn’t the most awful way to spend winter break, just, it couldn’t really be called _ winter _ break, which was almost enough to _ break _ Lance’s heart.

Keith was amused by it.

“What’s it matter? It does this every year,” he pointed out. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but this time, he sat on Lance’s bed when he did, watching with relative interest as Lance combed through his closet. “When was the last time we had a white Christmas?”

Lance flicked through his options. Flannel shirts, light jackets, printed t-shirts. It all seemed a little. . .plain. The long-talked about dinner at Allura’s was tonight and though Lance wasn’t specifically told to dress nice, he felt the unignorable itch to do so.

He wondered, briefly, when Lion Castle started to be just _ Allura’s _ in his mind.

Lance hummed and pulled a hanger out at random. “Like, when I was six? Maybe. I don’t remember.” He turned towards Keith, the shirt held against himself, but already set his mind to ‘no’ even as Keith inclined his head in a positive way.

“That sounds about right. It doesn’t happen. Did you have your hopes set on it?”

Yes, but he didn’t say that.

Lance returned the shirt. “V said that we were gonna get snow around now. I’m shocked we haven’t, is all.”

It wasn’t that, exactly. He rolled with it.

“There’s still time. ‘Around Christmas’ could be anywhere from a week ago to New Year’s.”

Keith had a point.

“Also, why are you digging through everything you own? We’re just going to Allura’s. You don’t have to get. . .all fancy for it. She said so herself.”

Lance took back his earlier thought.

He turned on him and pointed. “Says _ you _ . Look at you! With your leather jacket and new jeans. And you’re getting on to _ me _ for trying to look nice?”

Keith cocked a brow. “That isn’t what I said. I said you didn’t need to worry about it for Allura’s sake, or because we’re going to a--what did you call it? You called it a fancy dinner party earlier, didn’t you?”

“I said _ schmancy _, but close enough.” Lance waved a hand at him. “Point still stands you got all dressed up for it, too.”

Keith leaned back on his hands. His shirt did some very nice stretching across his chest that Lance didn’t mind witnessing. “Who ever said I got dressed-up for some _ schmancy _ party?”

Lance eyed him.

Half of Keith’s mouth pulled up, and Lance _ felt _ the smirk in his emotions, a chord of cockiness Lance rarely sensed but heard now, loud and clear.

He turned abruptly and started carding through his closet again, snapping the hangers back too quickly to see what was hanging on them. His face burned. “You! Can’t! Say! Stuff! Like! That!”

Keith’s soft laugh did nothing to help the situation. “I already did.”

“Well! Going forward then! It’s against the rules!”

“What rules? We have rules now?”

Outside of the obvious ones that didn’t need mentioned, or were even thought of in the heat of the moment.

“Yes! Yes, we do. Just decided. Right now. When your face did that thing your face was doing.”

“And what was my face doing exactly?”

Lance peeked back at him. He stabbed a finger towards him, that smirk, the light in his violet eyes. “That! All of that!” He gestured to the body-mirror attached to the door. “Check it out yourself if you’re still having trouble figuring it out.”

For what it was worth, Keith did get up on his feet. His boots struck the floor, but when he walked, his steps were light and barely made a sound.

However, he didn’t go to the mirror at all. He came up behind Lance instead, looking past him, into the closet and at Lance’s frozen hands.

He said, “Can I pick?”

Lance stared at him. “Pick what? Oh.” He dropped his hands. He couldn’t really slide out of the way without bumping into Keith, and it didn’t seem Keith cared either way. “Do you want to?”

Keith glanced at him. “Will you wear what I pick out? Hold on, actually, new rule, since that’s a thing we’re doing. If I pick something out, you can’t complain about it.”

“Keith--”

“Or you have to keep the complaining to a minimum.”

That was better.

Lance shrugged, and made to step out of the way, but Keith stepped up at the same moment. They hit, shoulder-to-back, back-to-shoulder, depending on who was who, and Keith, all the same, reached around Lance to continue the business of going through the closet. With no other option, Lance stood there, bracketed by Keith’s strong arms, and watched him look through his clothes.

It took all of two minutes, two deliciously warm minutes pressed against Keith’s chest.

Keith pulled out a shirt. “This one,” he said. His voice was a breath in Lance’s ear. Soft vowels. Airy pauses.

What he’d picked rested brightly against Lance’s dark skin, a blue the same as newly minted cornflowers. The fabric slipped across his fingers. It was Veronica's, a borrowed shirt mistakenly kept, unisex in cut, vibrant in color. Buttons winked under the light.

Lance sighed. “Fine. I guess it isn’t terrible.”

Keith smiled. Lance didn’t need to look at him to know it lit up his entire, stupid, smug face.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lion Castle awaited with an open gate and open windows, the front door swung inward in welcome, invite, a _ please come inside and make yourselves at home _.

_ Home _ . That was a word that seemed unlikely to go hand-in-hand with Lion Castle. Who would ever call this place _ home _?

Lance had wondered that once, what felt like a long, long time ago.

It seemed an impossible thought, put against what Lion Castle had become under Allura and Coran’s careful attention. The hedgerows were neatly, evenly manicured, and, for the undetectable season, wore crowns of stringed lights. Every angel in the garden, the bird baths and stone fountains had been scrubbed raw--what was once thought to be a patina of age was no more than moss stubbornly crawling up the wings of those weeping statues and clotting the bottoms of the basins green. A heavy wreath hung on the door; the open windows offered small hints what awaited inside: a lot of gold, a lot of red, and slips of silvered ribbon.

Lance couldn’t contain himself--he smiled at the sight of this old place looking so new and loved and. . .and, well, _ homely _. For people. Not ghosts. Not stories. Not Indigo Pull’s sour history and a long-ago terrible past.

Piece by piece, Coran and Allura were unearthing it and scraping it clean.

Keith stopped abruptly on the porch, his fingers squeezing Lance’s in a silent request to do the same.

Lance glanced at him. 

Under all the glowing, white lights, Keith seemed _ alive _, that was the first thing Lance noticed, his skin almost tanned and healthy, warmed under all the yellow-tinted bulbs. Without meaning to, Lance reached up and touched one of Keith’s cheeks. And, of course, it felt warm under his fingertips. 

Keith laid his hand over his.

His eyes _ dipped _ down, spying the spot he’d bitten, the very edge of the hidden bruise peeking out from the high collar of Lance's shirt.

It was a look that zipped straight down into Lance’s belly and _ settled _.

Lance shook him off. “What?”

“Nothing.” Keith worked his mouth, chewing his words before he spoke them. Somewhere inside the stomach of the manor, soft music crooned, another of Allura's songs, sung clear as a bird. Keith's face softened. Then hardened.

If emotions were physical things, Lance could strum his fingers against the taunt strings of Keith's unease, play a song of worry and, deep beneath that, buried almost out of Lance's sight--_ shame _.

Curious. 

Lance laced their hands together all the same, and fancied that he _ did _ play a sweet little melody over Keith's tangles and strings. _ It's okay _ , the song went, _ I'm right beside you _.

Keith's shoulders visibly eased. He released a quiet breath, and when Lance looked at him again, his dark eyes were crinkled at the edges from the same smile that ghosted across his lips.

"You're incredible," Keith said, the words hitting the air like they were well practiced, or, at least, often thought.

Lance, he grinned wide, and he held Keith's hands, and he said, all exaggerated airs and sighs, "Not _ that _ incredible, but thanks anyway."

Old, creaking floorboards stole the chance to reply.

Hearing the quick _ rap _ \- _ tap _ \- _ tap _ of heels made Lance assume Allura was the one coming to the door. But, no, who else to greet them other than Coran, wearing a grin and an expertly waxed ginger mustache.

"My! There you two are! We've been waiting absolute _ ages _ for you to arrive." A chuckle twitched beneath the mustache; Lance bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn't mirror it accidentally. "Allura was in the mind to call, but I told her, 'No, no! No need for that! They'll arrive soon, no doubt!' Mind, I said that an hour ago. You're not as soon as you could've been, but not as late, either." He seemed to recall something, and he rocked back on his heel--his shoes, Lance noticed, were impressive in their age and shine--and gestured grandiosely. "Come in, come in! The rest have already arrived!"

Keith flashed Lance a worried look once Coran had turned around, and Lance was quick to mouth _ He was joking _ to ease Keith's sudden anxiousness. 

If Lion Castle had been pretty before, and it was, it always was, tonight it was a _ wonder _. 

Garland hung around the doors in glittering gold and glittering white with glittering lights all around. Lance already spotted two separate Christmas trees, one the standard green (and _ real _, if the scent of pine was anything to go by) and one a pale gold or white. It was hard to tell under the lights and the heavy, golden ornaments weighing down its spindly branches. There were streamers of ribbon draped over tables, corkscrewing along the stair railing, dripping in molten splendor from the baby chandelier. Cinnamon spiced the air; Keith sneezed once, twice, and by the third time Lance stopped blessing him on the grounds that, "Now you're just being greedy."

But despite all the wealth Lion Castle held within, it was Allura who shone like the crown jewel, the heralding star, and all those other beautiful things that have no place wandering around common men.

She met them in the hallway, and she, too, was swathed in gold and white, ivory and cream. As she stepped, her heavy skirt made a gentle susurrus across the floor, her feet silent in their dazzling slippers, her arms outstretched in welcome. "There you two are!"

Lance cut Keith a haughty glance. This one said, _ See _? with great emphasis. Keith pointedly ignored him and quietly adjusted his jacket.

Allura's hands found Lance's, then Keith's, her gentle squeeze warm and heavy from her rings. "I thought you lost your way," she teased.

And Lance said, "Nah." While Keith explained, "Lance couldn't decide on what to wear."

That earned a healthy round of laughter even Lance joined in on, though it was at his own expense (however honest it also was). At the sound, Hunk and Pidge merkatted past the doorway, their shoulders pressed together, their heads looking like they sprouted from the same patchwork neck. They even shouted together, a sweet chorus of, "Hey!", that bloomed in Lance's heart like a wide-petaled flower.

They, at least, were dressed as Keith and Lance were, in a token 'Sunday Best'. A tidy shirt, a pair of dressier slacks, though they all seemed to have stuck to their trademark shoes. Ratty sneakers, worn-in boots.

Hunk jerked Lance in by the shoulders, their bodies hitting and melding together in a haphazard hug. Christmastime looked good on him, and the infectious smile he wore was all his own design. Lance might broadcast bigger emotions unconsciously, but Hunk was the true master of the craft. And whether he did it on purpose, if auras were a thing (and why wouldn't they be, with all else they knew?), then Hunk's was as loud and jovial and full of love as he was.

"Welcome to the _ party _ , buddy!" Hunk squeezed him tight. In the same, fluid moment, his movements like mercury, Hunk hooked his other arm around Keith, and pulled him into the same embrace. "You, too, Keith! _ Niiice _, jacket by the way. You look ready to break into someone's house."

Keith winced. "Ah, thanks?"

"Most welcome. Call me if you need any help."

". . .with breaking and entering?"

"You're right," he said, releasing the two of them. "I'm more of an intel-kinda guy. Leave the research to me. We'll give Pidge all the tech-and-hacking business--"

"Naturally," Pidge agreed, nudging up his glasses.

"And what about me?" This from Allura, who wore the biggest smile Lance had ever seen on her. Between him and Hunk and the overall giddiness from Christmas, it was easy to see why. "What part do I play?"

Hunk snapped his fingers. "The _ best _ part--the distraction!"

She seemed a little disappointed by this answer. "The distraction? I was hoping for more of a. . .hands-on part of the job."

"And what's more hands-on than making sure the victim doesn't expect a thing! You'll have to act! Entice! Become someone new for each scenario! It's the hardest job to pull off because everything will be riding on you and how you control the situation!"

Allura took to that a lot better. "Oh! Well, when you put it like _ that _\--"

That gave everyone a part in it except Lance. He lifted a hand and shot Hunk a look. "And me? Let me guess? Backup distraction? No, no, I'll be in the thick of it, helping Keith steal the goods? Yeah, that's it, that's--"

"Nah, bud, you'll be our driver. You know, for the getaway car," Hunk explained.

"What! But that's _ boring _."

"But highly necessary!" Hunk thumped him on the back. "Plus you always say you drive the best out of all of us, and no one--I mean _ no one _\--will suspect an old farm truck to be full of criminals."

Lance still scowled about it. "But I want to be part of the action, too!"

"You would be! Why else would Keith be risking life and freedom stealing all of Indigo Pull's hidden wealth if not to impress you? Make sure you have a life full of riches?"

As one, the entire group turned towards Keith. He looked back at them all, a question hiking up one, single eyebrow.

"Uh, I guess?" His gaze fell on Lance lastly and there it, as it often did, stuck. "Yeah."

His sudden resolve made Lance flush at the ears. 

"Shut--shut up!" Lance swatted at him, hands too far away to do any damage, and still red in the face, he turned and stalked into the den they gathered in on Halloween.

Gone were the droll ghouls and gaunt haunts, the black and orange tablecloths and candy bowls. What waited for Lance, and the rest when they followed behind him, laughing and merry as the season, was a fire-warmed room and the gleaming, white evergreen nested on top its clutch of numerous gifts.

Lance staggered.

He'd forgotten about the _ gifts _.

Pidge piped up, "You forgot again, didn't you?"

Lance groaned. "_ No _."

"Meaning _ yes _."

"Shut up, Pidge." Lance rubbed his hands down his face. "Why didn't anyone remind me! You know how I am."

"We do," Hunk agreed. "We placed bets."

Lance glared at him. In an exasperated rush, he said, "You did _ not _."

"'Course not, that'd be rude."

Without breaking eye contact, Hunk held out his hand towards Pidge, and was promptly rewarded a quick slip of a ten dollar bill.

Lance scowled. "I'm donating everything I bought you."

Pidge groaned. Another bill hit Hunk's awaiting palm.

"Are you _ serious! _" Lance threw up his arms--and that was as far as it went. 

Everyone started laughing. Not at him, but _ because _ of him. His antics, his loudness, his snap reaction following a bet-on script, it was all too funny for his friends to handle. Allura tried to stifle her laughter behind her hands, eventually caving when it proved pointless. Pidge and Hunk leaned against one another, horse-laughing, those well-earned bills dabbing the tears right out of Hunk's eyes.

And caught in the doorframe, one foot in the den, one snagged on the decorative rug, arms folded around himself like he might shake apart if he didn’t hold himself together, was Keith, his shoulders bouncing, his eyes shut and his mouth split in a fantastic smile.

Lance could've hit the floor with how quickly his knees jellied. He grabbed on to what, _ who _, was in reach, and dissolved right along with them.

They didn't hear the telling _ rap _ \- _ tap _ \- _ tap _, not a single one of them, not with all the noise they made, but Coran didn't mind waiting and whenever the first lulls came, when they heaved for breath and wiped their eyes and straightened where they stood, Coran, his own eyes twinkling, his smile wide and true, told them all, "Dinner is ready!"

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


To say they were calmer eating than they had been stumbling into the dining room, where the feast Coran spent all of two days preparing ("The holiday ham cannot be rushed, you see!") awaited, would've been a boldfaced lie. They were a mess of giggles and jokes and Lance's special indignation, and they picked at the offerings on their plates while their delightful conversation shot above the crowded tabletop. Lance _ glowed _ from it, that much Keith could see, actually, truly _ see _ as the night darkened around them, shading the windows from indigo to violet to black. Every one of them were flushed from laughter, the warmth of the fireplace going, the heat steaming off their loaded plates, but there was more to it, something only Keith could see, with his sharper eyes and attention.

This mirth was infectious and infected, and Lance was the beacon at the table, the mirror, the lighthouse light on fullblast, pulsing it out and taking it in, replaying it, living it, _ becoming _ it.

Beneath the table, their fingers reached forward at once, the same thought shared, the intent behind wanting to touch him loud enough Lance caught on without conscious effort. He didn't falter through what he was saying or look away from Pidge, nothing that gave away Lance had wove his fingers between Keith's and now held their hands pressed against his thigh.

It was the aftermath of this quiet action that made Lance look at him, because the simple way Lance held on to him made Keith swell with a staggering amount of love. It came without warning, a flash flood of affection Keith couldn't ignore even if he'd wanted to.

Lance's eyes softened. His mouth, all lips and laughter, pulled up. If they'd been alone, Keith would've kissed him. He _ wanted _ to kiss him, to taste that merriment, have it pressed against and into his own mouth, and then, suddenly, Lance was leaning in and doing just that, and everything else fell away. It went quiet, and Keith realized just how much Lance was filling the room with his talking and _ being _.

Lance drew away first, Keith automatically following for a second, a third, a fourth kiss he never got. Across the table, Hunk clasped his hands and heaved a heavy sigh, the soft sound--a gust of air, that was all--startled Keith into rocking back in his chair. He even snatched his hand away, distancing himself as much as he could now, and shook his hair into his face, hiding beneath it.

"Hey, come on now," came Lance's soft voice. His hand made a reappearance, settled, just there, around his knee.

Keith peeked at him. Then around the table.

The others were back to their antics. Allura passed an ornate gravy dish to Hunk when he asked, and at the head of the table, Coran sipped a bit of Christmas brandy from a crystal glass, dividing his time between stealing bites off his plate and listening to the conversation.

Lance watched him, and so did Pidge, and they both were quiet, for same and different reasons.

For the past week, him and Lance came up with several different ideas to get Keith out of eating. He was recovering from a stomach flu, and could only handle crackers or water or sips of lemon-lime soda. Or he'd already eaten with Shiro after he surprised him with a Christmas Eve dinner of his own, forgetting Keith already made plans and, likewise, Keith was unable to decline and risk hurting his feelings. And others, more and more far-fetched than the last--"Keith's fasting!", "Keith's allergic to salt. Yes, salt, who knew!", "Do you know what a Breatharian is?"

This led to a lengthy discussion on how none of that would pass by any of their friends. "They're too damn smart," Lance remarked, and so they went with a bit of playacting instead. Keith would select smaller portions, as would Lance, and through some flirty 'acting' (meaning it _ wasn't _), Lance would sneak bites off Keith's plate, giving the illusion that Keith was eating more than he was.

And so far it had worked. Or so Keith thought. Every now and then, Pidge looked over just like he was doing right now, eyes narrowed like he expected something to happen.

Keith blew him off the first few times, but it was starting to become a little obvious he was avoiding his food. So he did what he knew he shouldn't do--and took a huge bite of ham.

If cats now tasted like sewage, actual food tasted of sour rot, the stink of it, and Keith's stomach instantly fought against it. 

He locked his jaw, swallowed, and how he managed to keep the disgust off his face was either a miracle or some borrowed magic from Lance. Regardless, he ate a dinner roll, too, and sipped from his glass of water for the first time that evening. It all, every bite, every morsel, hit his stomach like heavy, rolling punches.

Pidge tilted his head, his mouth parting in question, but then Allura chimed to his left, and his attention flitted away.

Under his breath, Lance hissed, "What are you _ doing _?"

Oh. Right. Lance could feel that too, the nausea, the absolute revolt of his body. Were his hands shaking yet? Yes. The fork clattered in his fingers. Keith quickly put it back against the tabletop.

"I had to--" 

He lasted all of five more minutes before he shot to his feet. Chair legs scraped across the floor, calling attention, all the attention, to him. Lance's hand found his leg, stealing and stealing, not healing, he couldn't possibly, not this, this thing without a cure.

Coran leaned forward. The brandy glass found its spot on the table. "Everything alright, m'boy?"

"Fine." How was his voice so steady? Lance's fingers clutched, every nail scraping against Keith's leg. _ Like a beacon _, he thought again. "I just need to go to the bathroom."

"First door on the left, under the stairs," Allura provided unnecessarily.

Pidge watched him turn and leave.

Lance watched him, too, his hand staying against him as long as possible until it had to fall away.

Keith made it exactly to the stairs before he retched, body convulsing forward, bending double, his knees already sinking to the floor. He shot a hand out to grip the banister, steady himself, swallowing down bile and the sharp taste of his stomach trying to empty, and quickly darted up the stairs.

There were two bathrooms on this floor, another on the third. He knew where they were located, knew which doors led to them even though most were replaced and new.

He stumbled into one on the second floor, far enough away now no one could hear him and, he hoped, Lance couldn't sense his pain, then promptly fell to his knees and bowed over the toilet. Everything he'd eaten, he drank, which was nothing, absolutely _ nothing _, heaved out of him. 

When he was done, Keith slid shakily down against the cool floor, while downstairs, the deep bruise caught in the crook of Lance's throat went from gray to green to gone.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


There wasn't much time, but with the time he _ did _ have, Keith picked himself up, rinsed out his mouth, then hiked to the third floor. 

Everything looked different under the bright glow of the overhead lights. Cleaner (because it had been cleaned), organized (Coran's hand was in all of it; Allura's touch softer, here and there, pressed in the petals of full-bloom flowers and delicate lace tablecloths). Like a home (it always was). 

There were pictures on the walls, on tables, a stark difference from the Christmas wonderland down below painted in its reds and golds. Most frames held shiny oil paintings, some richly colored, others faded discreetly from too much sunlight and time. A family were showcased in most, a familiar face in others, a heritage spoken in a friend's sharp cheekbones and elegant hands.

Keith's head went sideways.

He smelled harsh lemon cleaner, Allura's lush perfume, the feast downstairs. The dust had been cleared away, the musk of abandonment aired out, beat violently from the carpets. The hardwood shone, walls were scrubbed free of cobwebs.

All the doors on this floor looked the same, an army of dark wood uniforms with gleaming, brass doorknobs for buttons. Keith strode past them, hurried, to the last door down the hall.

He wasn't surprised when he discovered the room past it gutted and bare, only vaguely disappointed. He crept past the threshold, his light steps groaning across the old floors.

Keith touched the wall.

The room wasn't big. It wasn't small. It, to be clear, wasn't much of anything. Four walls, a ceiling that caught the hush of rain when it fell, two windows tiny enough to be covered by a single, thick sheet. A faded square in the furthest corner colored the memory of where a pallet of blankets used to rest. 

Keith went to it. He crouched, his palm sinking into the old carpet.

This place looked a lot different a few months ago. The room, yes, but the house itself. It once offered shelter to a number of discarded things--mismatched furniture, three-legged chairs included, rugs of all eras and states of distress, clothing tucked in thin closets or damp dresser drawers, books and books and books, silverware, chipped planters and dead ferns, broken bookshelves standing sentry in the halls, old grandfather clocks wheezing amnesiac times.

And an orphan boy. A runaway. Someone hiding in plain sight.

Keith sank to the floor. He fell with his back to the wall, glancing over the old, familiar sight of the room. How long had it been since he stayed here last, buried in this very corner with every moth-devoured blanket he could find?

You see, this wasn't only Allura's home: Once upon a time, a long, _ long _ time ago, this used to be Keith's home, too.

The story went like this:

Keith woke up in Shiro's city apartment feeling as if someone had pushed him beneath a freight train. Exhausted, confused, and _ starving _, Keith pushed himself up from the couch someone had laid him on and caught the first brutal rays of afternoon light clean down his back and shoulder. The unexpected pain had him on the floor, and the unexplainable blisters-to-nothing happening under his fingertips had him on his feet again and stumbling blindly into the bathroom to see what was going on. 

The mirror confessed his skin burned but healed, and told the secret of his eyes, irises every color of purple and divided by narrow pupils. It didn't tell him _ why _\--that came later, when he was running away that very night, leaving behind Shiro and Adam, their claustrophobic worry, as much of his bedroom as he could stuff in the backpack slung across his shoulders.

For a long time, he walked in the dark. He saw the way clearly, the road bright as full-day under the moon. Keith suspected it then. But that was just a myth, wasn't it? Not reality. Not something he could suddenly _ be _.

At the next gas station he found, he darted into the bathroom and, beneath the harsh fluorescent bulbs, searched his body for a set of bite marks. 

He didn't find them then and never found them since.

But the cravings did, and they were harder to ignore, though Keith tried. It got him in the end, and much like a few days ago, Keith lost himself, blacked out, and came to with a small, lifeless body pressed against his mouth.

Thing was, Keith had no where left that wanted him. So he returned to the last place he'd left, just a month prior, his _ old _ home and every ounce of hurt that went along with it. Indigo Pull. It was meant as a punishment. He made sure to go to his father's grave first, the blood from a cat still flavoring his teeth, so he could see what Keith had become.

He came to Lion Castle out of desperation for a roof and a place to sleep. Abandoned places existed all over the valley, lean-to sheds and out-of-business shops and the like, but what Keith needed, what he wanted most of all, was to make sure no one would ever find him again. 

What else stayed at Lion Castle anyway, if not the most vile of things?

It took three days for Keith to get back to Indigo Pull on foot, the trip made longer by skirting off the road whenever a car approached and hiding during the day. How he made it--delirious from hunger, head reeling, memory conveniently scrambled--Keith still wasn't sure. But he _ did _. He climbed the wrought iron gate with shaking hands and smashed in a window to crawl through. With glass dusting his shirt, his knees, he surveyed the mildewed, dust-cloaked living room, the offerings of waterlogged books and warped records sitting on unbalanced tables, and promptly headed up the stairs.

He picked the room for its lack of wide windows, covered them securely, and made himself a bed. In the early days, he convinced himself he'd make something of a home out of the room. Decorate it, bring in tables and chairs and an actual bed from other parts of the house, hang posters on the walls, that sort of thing. It'd been the middle of April then, the first heat of summer expansive in that upstairs room, dense, suffocating, and Keith let himself be crushed by it, along with everything else.

He never got around to making that room any better.

He emptied his backpack only when it needed to be, when he _ had _ to change clothes after taking a quick wash in the river nearby. It stayed in the same spot he dumped it when he first arrived, and there it was left until, he had to assume, someone found it and tossed it out.

Was that what he was hoping for in coming all the way up here? His things? The memories?

Keith drew up his legs, pressing his face against his knees. 

He knew he'd been gone too long, that his friends were going to worry and set off to find him, but Keith couldn't get up. Or he wouldn't. What was the difference, exactly?

How many nights did he spend in this house, this beautiful, pristine house, tearing the walls apart for rats and mice?

How many days did he sleep through, when he found he couldn't (or wouldn't?) get up, and simply stared at the light rimming the covered window, watching it flip through the slow show of going from morning to dusk and back again?

This was downward spiral thinking. A darkness that came to claim his heart. He should've known better. That's what Keith always shouldered: He should've known better, he should've known better, he should've known better--

Fragrant citrus announced Lance's arrival long before his footsteps did. 

And then--

Then he was beside him, sinking down to the floor, a hand pressed to the top of Keith’s head, and he was saying, "Hey. Keith, hey, what's wrong? Why do you feel so miserable?"

The words were a hammer--they struck him, cracked him in half.

Both of Lance's hands found him, held him, spread their reassurance, eased the hurt, the pain, the sickness in his gut, the agony in his heart, all of it at once.

And now Keith leaned over, against Lance, close as he could be without lifting his head, drawn to him like moths to moonlight, sunflowers to sun. 

Lance asked him again, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Keith lied.

"You're lying. You can tell me." Keith kept quiet, so Lance kept speaking, "Why are you up here, anyway? We were getting worried about you."

Keith squeezed his legs harder. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Hey--give me your hand."

Keith offered it to him without looking up.

Lance's fingers melded with his, and he drew it forward, cradled it against his heart. The warmth, the light, the magic he gave off intensified and poured into Keith, washing away everything bad.

He let out a shuddering sigh. "You're getting better at this."

A smile lived in Lance's voice, "You think so? I've been practicing. Is it working? Like. You can feel it?"

"I can feel it."

"Tell me what it's like?"

Like every summer day Keith could remember. Like the burn of August asphalt under his bare feet. Like the comforter, scented like _ him _, pulled over them both.

Lance laughed. "Really?"

Keith peeked at him. "Really."

"There you are." And his delight was Keith's, shared and given. "Now will you tell me what's wrong? I felt it all the way downstairs, whatever it is."

They looked at each other, Lance's eyes soft and patient, Keith half-lidded and sad. With his hand to Lance's heart, counting each drum of it with his fingertips, Keith told him the story of how he ran away and ended up _ here _\--now, and at the very beginning.

Lance let him speak. This was the other night all over again, an openness allowing Keith to say what he needed to, as long as he needed too, with as many hesitant pauses and full-stops that arose. And when it was done, when Keith told him, "Then one day, I just couldn't come back. I walked up to the door, and my body wouldn't move, and I knew it had to be because someone had bought the house," Lance took his face between his hands and pulled him forward until their foreheads touched.

“You lived here? For _ five months _?" A breath hissed past his teeth. “And the shed--”

That was what he found after, when in a panic, he scoped Indigo Pull out and happened to find it, half-lost in the woods.

Lance was beside himself. "You should've come to my house! I would've shared my room with you--you could've had my bed, I would've slept on the floor and, and--"

Keith shook his head. "It's okay. I managed."

He didn't say _ we weren't like this, back then _, but that was what he meant.

Lance's face screwed up, a haunt of his own misery peeking out, born from this new knowledge. Keith took his hand and held it against his heart, like Lance had done for him, and wished he could give him a taste of what it was like, to be healed from the inside-out.

"That's _ awful _, Keith, I--"

"Really, it wasn't. All things considered, it could've been worse."

Everything could always be worse.

Something crossed Lance's face--dawning understanding. "Oh, so it was you I saw," he said, eyes bright.

Keith frowned at him. "When?"

"When I snuck in. Well, okay, I got to the porch, but, yeah--you remember, don't you?" He pulled his hands back, showed Keith his naked palms, and Keith had the funny, swooning sensation of déjà vu. The Holt's. The dark morning. A thousand pictures on the wall. And Lance, his scrapped hands, the first time Keith dared to touch him. "So you _ do _ remember!"

Keith nodded. "Yeah. And I remember you sneaking on the porch. I thought you'd caught me."

"I saw you--"

"But you didn't know who it was, right?"

"Fair, I didn't. I thought you were a ghost or something."

"Not far off." Keith gestured at himself. He seemed to be in the perfect position to be categorized as _ something _.

Lance punched him in the arm. "Stop."

"It's true."

"It isn't!"

"Lance--"

"Nope, no, for the last time, you can't change my mind." 

"Maybe if I try harder, you'd--"

Lance grabbed him by the face again, kissed him once, kissed him _ hard _, and Keith shut up about it.

"That's cheating," he murmured. Lance was on his feet, his hands warm vices around his wrists, hauling him up.

Keith watched Lance's frown deepen, felt him twist his wrists, his fingers skimming up the underbelly of his arm, inside the cuff of his jacket. The touch sent shivers crawling across his skin.

"Ready to go back down," he asked, which didn't sound like it was what he wanted to say.

Keith shrugged his shoulders. "Might as well. There's nothing left for me here."

Lance squeezed his wrist, fingers bearing against the pops of bone, holding on and holding on, in both this and the intense look he flashed his way. Keith was reminded of the ocean right before a storm, the potential of rain and waves and wind rolling in from the waterfront, all kinetic energy and nature shifting into a powerful, dangerous thing.

He braced himself.

Lance told him, words heavy and clear, thunder in their own right, "Yes. There is."

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


For no other reason than to inspire Lance's delight, the two of them headed outside. Since the trek cut through the den where the others were gathered, their friends flocked with them, and the entire group strode out into the muggy night.

"It doesn't feel much like Christmas at all," Pidge complained. He and Allura turned on the floodlights stationed throughout the yard, this sudden bright light a new, unsettling dawn. "I can _ feel _ the humidity sticking to me already."

It was a distressing truth. The air was heavy with it, damp and heated. Sunset provided a whisper of a breeze to cool their skin, but it was nothing to warrant Hunk's yellow sweater or Keith's leather jacket, and it ruined the golden allure of Lion Castle's decorum. Why all the green and red of Christmas time when distant heat thunder suggested Fourth of July fireworks and barbecues?

Still, Lance's good spirits rose. 

He paraded down the porch steps, out onto the sloping back lawn with a hurried sense to him, the same boundless energy of the lightning flickering in the distance. That's why the humidity felt so oppressive--the thunder wasn't from the heat at all, but from an advancing storm front tangled around the mountains. Maybe they'd catch a glimpse of it sometime come morning. Lance wanted it as much he wanted snow, the thrill of _ something _ to spice the day up a little more.

"You're right. It sucks out here." Hunk picked his way down the steps, hands tucked away in his pockets. He had his chin up and eyes scraping the sky, searching for stars and moon that were hidden away. "Why'd we come out here?"

Lance threw out his arms. "Because I've always wanted to see this place's backyard," he admitted, without a blush of shame. 

He didn't mean the trimmed lawn dusted with bird baths and crying angels. He meant the _ further out _ of it, the trenches of old farm land, their neat rows overrun with brittle tangles of indigo plants and decades-worth of weeds. He meant the worn paths encircling the stock houses and the weary-roofed sheds, the collapsed ruin of the old stable, the grid marking walkways through the field. He meant everything that made Indigo Pull _ indigo pull _.

Allura joined him, her skirts snapping out in the wind. _ A ghost _ , said Sylvio. _ A princess _ , said Nadia. _ Both _, agreed Lance as he watched her turn toward the yard, her expression sad, her heart sad, all because of some long-ago thing her hands never had a part of.

"When I was younger, my father liked to remind me where our money came from. Everytime we made a trip down this way, he'd make sure to stop here. He used to have these. . .comically big keys to the front gate, and he'd make a show of unlocking it and pushing it open, like a great and terrible thing awaited us inside." She knelt. Her dress took on the dirt and dust of the place, the hem surely ruined. Quietly, under all their stares, she pressed her palm flat against the earth, and told them things she must’ve been holding onto for a long time. "He told me. . .awful, awful things about my family. They--so many people were abused under them, worked until they couldn't--until they _ died _ \--and for what? For flowers? Dye? _ Money _ ? How could anyone think any of that is _ worth _ more than human lives?"

Allura clutched the stalks of brown grass between her fingers, her skin the same dark as the soil. She was just another plant, another shrub of flowering buds, and the prettiest, purest thing this ugly garden ever grew.

Lance crouched beside her, and he laid his hand over hers. 

They all knew how the town got its name, how Indigo Pull erased the name it had prior, blotted it clean from the ledger heads and books, all for this plantation and its crop and how both sprung up so fast that it stained the town dark blue and red.

Looking out on those night-dark fields, the porch lights bright as Heaven, there was no dark blue. No red. No indigo. Only black sky, brown earth, and the hints of green flushing through the trees. Indigo Pull, if boiled down, would be that very green, the bright spearmint flash of spring.

"I don't know," Lance said. He looked from her out over the fields again. Her regret at how she had earned her fortune made him love her suddenly and fiercely, all for her gentle, honest heart. "I don't think any of us ever will. That was a really long time ago, and people should've known better then, yeah, but at least they do now."

Allura turned her bright eyes to him. At her throat, her necklace glittered gold and turquoise blue. "Some days I feel like I cheated the system. Don't you see? If it was just a few decades ago, I wouldn't be here--" She pointed at the house, the lights spilling in from the windows, the open door suggesting the retreating form of Coran, there and gone again, a shadow in that pane of warm light. "--I'd have spent my life out _ there _."

Lance followed her hand again, and saw the fields of his childhood, these blood-soaked plots and troughs gauged in the dirt. During winter, when the leaves cleared away, sometimes he could spy through the iron bars this wild, untouchable land. For years, Lion Castle was as good as any fable he read in his childhood books, as lush as any of his _ abuela's _ stories, more vivid than any lesson taught in History. It was real, it had happened, and it happened _ here _. The proof stared at them in the beaten paths, the dirt smoothed from a million-million steps from hundreds of heavy, tired feet. It was in Allura's dark skin and her blue eyes, a mix of heritage that, once, would have damned her to a miserable life picking flowers off their stems.

"That doesn't forgive it," Allura said.

"It doesn't. But it's not your fault either." He lifted their hands, turned them so their palms faced skyward. "You aren't responsible for your ancestors mistakes, Allura, or their sins."

Allura looked up from their hands. Her eyes were seas, waves lapping at the shores of her lash line. And inside, her heavy heart didn't believe him, for all the truth he carried and knew.

Quietly, she pulled her hand back. 

She stood, skirt sighing, her shoulders sagged, and even with that weight resting on her, this princess of Lion Castle stood as proud as any garden rose. 

"If not mine, than whose?" she asked. "I have to find some way to make amends. I . . .don't know how, but I will." Her conviction shot through her words. They sparked something in all of them, in Pidge and Hunk, and in Keith who turned her way, his emotions surging and unsure. "That's why I came back."

Pieces Lance didn't realize were missing clicked into place. He’d wondered--they _ all _ had wondered why anyone would want to take Lion Castle, its horrors and cursed name. He never thought it was because someone wanted to polish it up, make it shine and glitter, as if the past of it could be ignored or changed or made better. Which it couldn't. It wouldn't. 

But Allura didn't want to ignore it--she wanted to ask for forgiveness.

Lance stood, too, and the moment he did, Keith came up to him.

They were close enough to touch, but they didn't. They shared a small look, took a sip of the same sadness and loss. Lance looked away first, heart a heavy stone in his chest.

He could almost imagine how it was before, the fields full green and speckled with countless flowers, blues and pinks amongst the tight hold of leaves and tiny stems, the sun licking hot overhead. And the workers, the laborers, the--call them for what they were--_ slaves _ bent over the bushes, fingers worn to blood and callous, the backs of their necks blistered from the heat. They'd walk the dirt paths over and over, day after day, from the first breath of dawn to dusk's final exhale.

Lance looked and saw and realized it was no imagining. 

Bowed over the dead and dying indigo plants, hidden partially outside of the light, were crippled shadows, bent double, chest-to-knees, shoulder blades slicing at the sky. They had too many fingers on each, thin hand, and their arms were sickly twisted, and their legs were stunted beneath the weight of a ceaseless, invisible sun. 

Where faces should be--eyes and lips and noses, expression, _ humanity _\--was nothing at all. Just blankness, an identity erased.

Lance's feet lurched forward. He stumbled deeper into the yard, heart a stuttering mess, hands shaking. But he had to _ see _. He already knew--how could he not? He'd seen it once before. Behind him, Allura called his name. Like a sharpened knife, Keith cut after him without question, reading his sudden panic in the air before the others understood why they felt anxious and upset. He caught Lance's wrist, and the instant they touched, Keith sucked in a quick breath.

Lance glanced at him, startled. “You can see them?”

They were nearly transparent in the dark, true black against the hush of evening. They moved, Lance realized, not towards him and Keith, but hobbled down the paths. Their pain infested his senses, their misery, the utter hopelessness that made wounds where their hearts should be. And there were several, close to where they were, and further in the fields, each and every one a black void of all cherished and good.

"Yeah." Keith sounded unsure. He _ felt _ unsure, heart hiccuping, confused as to why he saw these broken things searching for flowers they wouldn't find. "What--what are they?"

The shadows shifted, ebbed and stepped and searched. They were silent on the outside, and screaming on the inside. Lance's head dizzied from it, and he knew they'd been here so long, they'd forgotten that they no longer had to do what they were doing. There was nothing to harvest. They didn't have to die in these fields all over again.

The quiet hurt of Lion Castle, its haunting air, these were not inspired by its rundown appearance or the fact the building was an old, temperamental thing with a history to match. Lance wondered if he'd always felt them, these lost creatures, calling out to him in the only way they knew how, long before Lance learned their language.

In a breathless rush, Allura and Pidge and Hunk encircled him, wearing faces stitched from worry.

"What's wrong? You look--why are you _ scared _?" Pidge looked around, saw nothing, then looked past Lance's shoulder, to where the light of the porch fell away to shadow.

"Please, _ please _ , don't say you saw something out here! It's the middle of the night, man, don't say it's something like _ that _\--" Hunk’s nerves leapt. “It’s not. Is it?”

_ Something like _ that--

_ That _ meaning the only other ghost Lance had seen. Adam, crystal clear, the day of his funeral.

"Lance--" Allura stepped beside him, her attention where Lance's was focused. Her eyes scanned and reasoned shapes from the darkness, saw the bushes and the tall weeds Coran hadn't yet gotten to with his hedge clippers. "Perhaps you saw a shadow. Nothing more."

“Or a raccoon?” Hunk’s meager offering didn’t go unheard.

It was Lance’s knit brows and heavy frown that gave it away, that this was nothing natural or could be explained away by the wind or a trick of the light. Keith watched the shadows work, his hand clutched around Lance’s arm, his unwavering gaze not something to easily dismiss. Hunk and Pidge exchanged glances.

Allura started at them all, the only one of them who wouldn’t know. “What is it,” she asked again, glancing between the four of them.

Lance was reminded of the promise he made about choices, about making each one count and worth it. He saw Allura hesitate, tasted it between them, peppering her next breath.

There were two choices he could make. Tell her, or don’t. Let her know about this secret of his, or pass off their odd behavior as some late night unease inspired by the shaking shadows of the trees.

He chose neither, and held out his hand.

“I can show you,” he said, “if you want to see for yourself.”

Pidge and Hunk and Keith stood still, just three more angels for the garden.

Allura, without a reason to doubt him, reached out and took his hand.

The instant their palms touched, she saw the spirits tending to the namesake of the town herself, all those faceless shadows bent forward or wandering down the paths they had made, replying habits so ingrained in them they carried them into death, their ghostly hands always pulling at the indigo.


	22. Chapter 22

Lance woke to thunder striking his bedroom window.

He stared at the panes of glass, belatedly realizing they were uncovered, the bedsheets torn from their pushpins and a lumpy heap on the floor. The glory of the rain shower was visible as it beaded and slid down the glass, lit from the porch light or the struggling sunrise, it was hard to say. The gray sky looked endless as the sea, full of rifts and shifts and the frothy impressions of waves.

Captivated and feeling that same, soft unease of it storming on Christmas carrying over from the day before, Lance was late sensing Veronica standing in the doorway. Rachel, too, hovering just behind.

Together, their concern replaced all else, chased off the pleasant dregs of his dreams, the unsettling delight at the thunderstorm, the always-present love for his family, for Pidge, for Hunk. What grew for Allura. For Keith.

Rachel stepped into the room first, her slim body twisting away from hitting Veronica's at the last second. To the untrained eye, the move was dance-like, a slippery shift of her feet. Lance knew better. It came from something more graceful than dancing, this deeply rooted  _ knowing _ of each other, as if they were of the same body and shared the same space.

"We need to talk," she said, like this was the new 'hello', a better alternative to 'good morning'.

Lance pushed himself up.

"We've been meaning to, but--" Veronica sighed. She pressed her fingers beneath her glasses, fingertips smoothing over heavy circles under her eyes, her weariness as felt as it was seen. 

Lance reached for it without his hands, brushed against it in the same familiarity Rachel used to move around Veronica. The McClain siblings were more like a single creature, composed of legs and arms and hearts that bore their names, instead of being separate people entirely.

Veronica flicked her fingers into the air, an unspoken request. 

Lance stopped and glanced between them, his sisters, and saw what he'd been ignoring for days laid out in the open. "You're scared," he said. "For me." He met each of their eyes--V's clear gray, Rachel's simmering blue--and he asked them, "Why?"

In reply, Rach sat heavily on the edge of his bed. The comforter sank under her weight, half-spilled down onto the floor. Lance watched her chew her lower lip, and he watched her fidget in a way that was unlike her. Of the five of them, Lance was the fidgeted, not her.

He reached over and held her hand.

A smile tried and failed to appear. "You sure you aren't a mind reader, too?" She breathed out a small, uncertain laugh. "Yeah, bad time to joke, I know. Sorry, V." Veronica had said nothing, and Lance could only guess what Rachel had heard in her head. "Listen, Lance. V had one of her dreams."

The dread started to make sense. The worry. The way Veronica wouldn't stop staring at him. How Rachel squeezed his fingers so tightly they grew numb.

"About me," Lance guessed, which wasn't really a guess at all. "What happened?"

"It might not have been you. . .I didn't see a face." Veronica found it in her to move, and finally joined them on the bed. She sat beside Rachel, took her hand, and they were linked, Lance-Rachel-Veronica, a line of McClain siblings taking up the bedside. They were the heart and the mind and the reason of their family, all gathered there that rainy morning, sharing the cinnamon-spiced air of Lance's bedroom, feeling the busy movement of their mother downstairs, each in their own ways.

"But, it looked like you," Rach confirmed. Her heart went heavy. Lance squeezed her fingers a little harder. "It  _ really _ looked like you, Lance."

There came horror. True terror. Things much stronger than  _ fear _ . These emotions shot through Lance's chest, bright as the purple veins of lightning threading the clouds, and he shuddered and clutched at Rachel's hand with his tingling fingers. He wished for their way of seeing, the solid honesty of it. Not a rush of feelings, but a rush of pictures and sounds, so he could know what they knew.

"What happens?" Lance didn't know what else to ask or how else to ask it. He looked back at Veronica. Her eyes met his. She hadn't looked away.

Veronica opened her mouth, closed it. A sick feeling crawled up her throat, up Lance’s throat, and it was Rachel, after a shared look, who confessed the bloody ruin of Veronica's dream.

"She dreamt about. . .the riverbank."

Lance cut in, "The riverbank?"

"Yeah. The one you like to go to--which is why we thought--why we  _ think _ \--" Rachel grit her teeth. This wasn't her way of talking, these halts and harsh starts. 

Neither of them were being themselves.

Lance understood, in a rush. "I get hurt."

Rachel shook her head. "No,” she said softly. “Worse. Lance, it looked like--if it's you, and it might not be, it really might not be--but it looked like whoever it was was dying."

_ Dying _ .

Lightning brightened his windows. A flash of white edging into violet back into the charcoal gray of morning.

Thunder crowded into the room, found all the space between them, and shuddered.

Lance sucked in a breath. “But you said you didn’t see a face. So it might not be me, right?”

Rachel had said that, but Lance had to say it again. He had to hear himself say the words.

“Right.” Though Veronica said it with certainty, her heart confessed something else. Doubt, strong and true. “But we needed to tell you. You need to stay away from the river.”

In his hand, Rachel’s fingers shook.

Across the bed, Veronica looked about as blown away as the sky, her face a sleepless mask, her eyes bruised beneath from trying to escape her nightmares.

Because of him.

He met each of their stares again. “For how long,” he asked, though he knew the answer.

Rachel told him what he was already thinking, though he doubted she used her powers to know. “Until we know it’s not you.”

So until someone else ended up dying or dead by the river, and they could collectively breathe knowing Lance was safe. Or not. Afterall, Veronica’s dreams were true things whether or not Lance was involved in them.

Another question surged up, but before he had the chance to ask it, Rachel answered.

“No, no one else knows. Just the three of us.”

For the first time, Veronica looked away. 

Guilt devoured her. 

Their mother busied over the stove down below, awake before the dawn, finishing preparations for their Christmas breakfast. Lance felt her quiet delight at the task, her heart full of love and song. And he knew what would happen if she knew if he--or  _ any _ of her children--was going to get hurt.

_ Or die _ , he forced himself to think, the thought spear-sharp.

Rachel squeezed his fingers again. “Please. Promise us you’ll be careful.”

There was nothing else he could do. There was nothing he  _ wouldn’t _ do.

“I will. I promise. But you need to tell me everything,” he told them both. “I need to know everything you do.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Christmas at the McClain’s always began with a beautiful early breakfast, followed by the long-awaited gift-giving, then finished off with a late lunch that somehow always became a dinner of reheated leftovers still in their casserole dishes and pans. It was a day that seemed to stretch the span of three days instead of one, where time blurred and faded away as the kids zipped around underfoot, the conversations grew and lingered, and where the coffee never seemed to cool or run dry. Lance used to break away early, leave half-way through supper, and walk down to Hunk’s, ending the day curled in his sunshiney attic bedroom with Pidge, their collection of tupperware arranged in a potluck offering between them.

But this Christmas, Lance stayed in the kitchen from breakfast to second dessert, perched in a chair by his  _ mamá _ , laughing and talking and chasing away every stubborn slip of unease that tried to creep into the room. If she noticed his hand in keeping the mood up, she didn’t show it, but more than once, Lance caught Rachel’s twisted look and saw Veronica start into the room only to turn and leave it again.

The weight of their worry darkened all else.

For one day, Lance wanted them to let it go. It was  _ Christmas _ , the middle of winter, summer half-a-year away. He shouted it towards Rachel in his mind, begged her to tell V the same thing. He’d be fine. He promised he’d be careful, avoid the riverbed for the rest of his life--Lance tried to ignore the double meaning of the phrasing--if that’s what it took.

After Veronica retold her dream and let him read the journal entry himself, all three of them combed through their closets for similar shirts to the one V saw. A small stack of long-sleeve shirts met a terrible end by three separate pairs of scissors. The bag holding the ribboned cloth sat underneath Rachel’s bed, awaiting a spare moment she could sneak it off and burn it.

Extremes taken for an extreme thing.

All day, Lance tried to write a message to Keith about it.

He composed several texts explaining what might happen--and every time, he highlighted the block of text and hit  _ delete _ .

His sisters' worry was enough, and even that was overbearing and heavy. Keith’s would smother him. Lance could only imagine what he might say or do once he found out.  _ If _ he found out.

Indecision made Lance sick.

“What’s wrong,  _ mijo _ ?” The words hit him hard, but the touch of his mother’s warm hand was as it always was--soft and comforting. “You’ve been frowning at your phone all day. Troubles?”

Across the table, Rachel’s heart tightened. He eased it away, encouraged it to turn into something better--calm, anything other than fear--and turned to his mother with a laugh ready on his tongue.

“It’s nothing.” At her sharp look, he promised, “Don’t look at me like that! Really, it’s fine.  _ I'm _ fine."

“Mh-hm, and what’s all this then?” She pressed her thumb between his eyebrows, rubbing at the knot of wrinkles pinched there. “Thinking hard, are we?”

"I'm known to do it sometimes, thank you!"

Her quiet chuckle set him at ease. Then hurt his heart when he thought of never hearing it again. Weeks or months or years. The knowing was as bad as the unknowing, equally as difficult to carry. This was why they say 'ignorance is bliss.' How did Veronica survive it?

" _ Ay, ay _ , I wasn't making fun," she said, her smile full of warmth.

Lance tossed his phone down to the cluttered tabletop. "I know,  _ mamá, perdón _ ."

She swatted at him again, waving it aside, and pulled his half-finished plate toward her. "Stop that. Are you finished?" He nodded, and she rose up, collecting the scattered remains of other abandoned dishes and glasses and mugs, in which dregs of old coffee swam. "Invite him over,  _ mijo,  _ if that's what's been weighing your mind."

One of the things he loved most about his mother was her endless well of understanding. Not once since Lance and Keith started dating, not even when it came out Keith wasn't exactly human, she never questioned it. Maria McClain's love wasn't based on strict conditions; it didn't waver or fail. Not when Veronica introduced her first girlfriend, or her second. Not when Rachel alternated between bringing home a different boy or a different kind of broken heart. Not at Luis' decision to marry straight after high school and start his family early. Not at Marco's final answer at the teasing questions directed his way: "I'm not into that sort of thing," he'd said, and that was that, the questions stopped, and life went merrily on.

If her family was well and happy, Maria McClain was well and happy, too.

For a blissful, forgotten second, Lance filled up with that borrowed feeling.

Then he caught a shuffle of Veronica's sharp-edged emotions, and Rachel's persistent anxiety, and rocked forward, snatching for his phone.

"You're sure you don't care--" he began, as a way to speak through what he now absorbed from his sisters, disguising it as his own love sickness, or an uncharacteristic shade of bashfulness. His  _ mamá _ sliced her hand at him, a mock hit and  _ shoo _ ing gesture all tied in one, and Lance rocketed up from his chair, finally relenting. 

"Okay, okay! Don't hit me!"

Her smile felt like June and looked just as pretty. "I'll pack some leftovers for him to take home."

Lance gave her a bemused look. "But Keith doesn't--"

"For Shiro,  _ mijo _ ," she explained. The plates and sundry cups chimed and clanked as she moved into the kitchen, her voice building to reach through the swinging kitchen door, "And you tell that boy, or you do it yourself, but one of you extend the invitation to him. Keith may not eat, but Shiro still does."

A true laugh bubbled past his lips. Leave it to his  _ mamá _ to find a way to get rid of all their extra food.

The rest of the family, for the most part, greeted Lance when he stepped into the living room. Luis and Lydia shared the couch with Marco, the three of them watching Nadia and Sylvio play an odd game of catch with equal parts interest and suspense. Rachel and their father cheered the game on, placing bets of thumbprint cookies and the last of the rum-spiked coffee. Veronica sat midway up the staircase, eyes turned towards the kids but her attention focused inward. 

Lance took a step towards her--

\--just as Nadia bounded in front of him, Sylvio at her heels. They wore matching expressions of laughter-ruddy cheeks and wide, wide smiles.

For a moment, Lance borrowed their delight as his own. 

"What are you two up to that's got you looking like that?" He spied something clutched in Sylvio's hands. Something tiny and brown, with rounded edges. Lance cocked his head. 

"A game,  _ Tío _ ! Wanna see?" Sylvio's voice was breathless with excitement.

Nadia bounced on her toes, pigtails flapping. "Do you? Do you?"

Lance gave in. Of course he gave in. There wasn't any universe where he would have turned them away. "Uh,  _ yeah _ ! Show me!"

Nadia spun towards her brother--and then Lance saw what Sylvio held or, rather, what he threw at Nadia, his aim true.

A chestnut, of all things.

It sailed through the small distance between them, and when it began arching down toward the floor, momentum dying, Nadia reached forward and clapped it between her palms.

The sound of her hands touching made a startling loud  _ pop! _ and flashed an instant of bright white light that faded pale yellow. Wisps of smoke curled through the gaps of her fingers.

Sylvio shrieked the same moment the heat fanned across Lance's cheeks.

Nadia unclasped her hands, opening them like a flower, palms facing upward in offering.

The chestnut shell lay scattered across her skin, blackened and slightly smoking. And there, in the nest of shards, a single roasted nut, a little on the side of overdone, but perfectly edible all the same.

Lance's eyebrows climbed into his hairline. 

Nadia, she was using her gift to roast chestnuts as she caught them. And, looking around the room, the evidence of how long the game had carried on dusted the floors, and filled a small bowl of similarly colored nuts for whoever wanted to eat them.

Lance reached down and plucked the one Nadia offered him. It was warm. Her skin, blistering hot.

"That's  _ amazing _ ," he said, awe coloring his words, his eyes bright, showing her how clearly impressed he was with her control. And, of course, never to leave Sylvio out, Lance turned that same look towards him, all of it honest. "And that throw! You two make a good team!"

"A  _ great _ team," Sylvio corrected.

"That's what  _ Tía _ said," Nadia chirped. 

It wasn't hard to guess which one, if the loud  _ whoop _ from Rachel and a disgruntled noise from his father were anything to go by. 

Despite the weight of Veronica's prophecy, how he could have only months or years left to look forward to things like this, Lance couldn't help but smile and join in on the kids' game. He took a handful of chestnuts, and together he and Sylvio darted around the room, dancing around the couches and chairs and all the people stuffed inside them, and tossed the nuts at Nadia's quick hands. The resounding noise was like fireworks, firecrackers, all those loud, bright things of the Fourth of July. Soon, the house smelled like char and roasted nuts, and between the three of them, they overfilled the bowl and ate so many they were each sick to death of chestnuts.

All the while, Lydia kept her worry caught between her hands and inside her racing heart, identical places where Luis carried his pride. Their mother joined them at some point--it was blurry, lost in the rush of his feet and the kids following behind or darting ahead. She sat on the armchair with Diego, his arm around her waist and hers circling his neck in a way that said they did this often and were more comfortable sitting like that than apart. The bowl of chestnuts was passed around, devoured, refilled. Rachel drank her victory coffee and rewarded Lance and the kids two cookies apiece for their help. Marco dozed off, the warmth of the room winning over the noise.

Veronica left.

Lance only noticed because the weight of her sadness left, crawled upstairs with her like a thing alive.

With her gone, the mood in the room transformed. Quieted. Softened at the edges.

The kids settled down, now out of chestnuts and bored of the game anyway, and went to their other games and toys. Lydia breathed like she wasn’t able to before, and Luis took one of her worry-hands, tracing circles across the lines of her palm, until a smile overtook her frown and the sour twists of her emotions eased. Marco slept on, dreaming sweet things, if Lance could guess. Rachel would know, probably saw them flicker in colorful bursts inside his head. 

Lance glanced at her and caught her staring at him. His parents, too. Three sets of similar eyes, all some sort of sky color, or sea color, directed at him.

"She's not been herself tonight," their  _ mamá _ remarked. If Lance-Rachel-Veronica were the heart-mind-reason, then Maria McClain would be the family's soul. 

Lance wondered if she could feel things like he felt, but only when it hurt, only when it was bad. Wasn't it all the same, to a healer?

"I'll go talk to her." Lance picked himself up from the floor where he was sitting, dusting off shells and partially eaten chestnuts, conscious of the weight of the phone in his pocket.

Rachel shot to her feet. "I thought you wanted to invite Keith over? I'll go see what's up with V."

It was a life vest in choppy waters. A dismissal. A meaning not-so-hidden between the lines.

Lance frowned at her. Rachel simply smiled and made it to the stairs before he did, and once she reached the shadowed alcove, a place only Lance could see from where he was standing, Rachel pointed at him, then drummed her fingernail against her forehead.

Her voice whispered in his head,  _ call him. _

Then she was gone.

Lance took the offering given to him, and slipped out into the cooling evening. Plopped down between the weeping hydrangeas and stubborn holly bushes, as comfortable as he could get against the damp stairs, Lance called Keith.

He answered at once.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


And showed up sooner than humanly possible.

Which, granted, fell into the territory.

Keith avoided climbing in through the window on account of the rain and so he could say hello to everyone--it was, afterall,  _ Christmas _ . Lance watched Keith get shuffled through at least three different hugs and two firm pats on the back before he was relinquished into Lance's care.

Lance hurried Keith up the stairs, their hands joined by the lightest touch between their fingers and that--well, it both made everything better and everything worse. Like worrying bruises or picking at scabs. That was what it was like, how it  _ would _ be, until Lance found his courage and put it to work.

But for today, for  _ tonight _ , he wanted just this. Time with his family and time with Keith and the promise of spending the following days with Hunk and Pidge and Allura. It was already planned out, at least on Lance's part.

Was it possible to miss something before it was gone?

The bedroom door fell shut behind Keith's attentive hand. His eyes were the same color as plums, dark like amethyst, and full of questions he didn't have a chance to ask.

Before Keith could form the words, before he could think if anything was out of the ordinary, before he could retreat back a step or advance one forward, before Keith could think to breathe or to move, Lance kissed him first.

It started softly. Then it grew with every pulse of Lance's anxious heart. He pressed against him, and Keith, with nowhere else to go, sank back against the door, his hands finding their way up into Lance's hair, fingers hooking, twisting, pulling him forward.

And for a little while more, Lance forgot that he might die. In weeks or months or years. Sooner or later or maybe not like Veronica had seen at all.

Lance's hands smelled like char and coffee; Keith, like ozone and laundry pulled from the drier, clean and warm. They were tangled loosely together in a knot of racing hearts and circling arms, hands and fingers that brushed the hair away from their faces to keep it from tickling their noses. When Lance gasped his lips apart, Keith knew what to do after to turn Lance's legs into jelly. They went to the floor, laughing, and that only made Lance want to kiss him more.

So he did. His mouth fluttered against Keith's as he tried to speak around everything going on--his own breathing, Lance's insistence, the laughter squirming through them both.

Finally, Keith pulled away.

Lance unconsciously followed.

He wanted every stolen second and minute and hour, use it to forget the thunderstorm morning and his sisters' heavy stares. Use it like a tongue over chapped lips. Lance wanted the instant relief. He needed it, knowing full well it would just hurt worse when it was over.

"Wait, no, hold on just a second--" Keith's voice was graveled, either from waking up early or  _ this _ , and Lance had a pretty good guess as to which it was. He didn't have a chance to dwell or tease. Keith slid his fingers down Lance's face, and a chord of golden concern pushed aside Lance’s own worries. “What’s wrong?”

He said it like he could guess at what Lance was feeling.

It wasn’t the first time Keith had said something like that, and Lance, without thinking, touched the crook of his own neck. Keith followed the movement. He reached up and took his hand, and they clasped together, held tight.

Lance almost broke apart right there.

Under Keith's searching stare, Lance realized that he had so many people to warn. Not just Keith, not just his family, but Hunk and Pidge, too. And could he do it? Could he tell them that he might die because of--he didn’t even know what. Veronica’s dreams were broken things, stitched together images that didn’t tell much of a story. The muddy riverside, bloated with rain. A bent arm stuffed inside a black shirt. And blood, a bad feeling, a maybe-this-is-you. 

Maybe.

_ Maybe _ .

Was it better to say something or to pretend he didn’t know?

“Lance?”

Lance closed his eyes. He didn’t know.  _ He didn’t know _ .

Against their laps, Lance clutched Keith’s hands. He felt Keith’s emotions pull taunt, and he knew it was selfish, God was it selfish, but he soothed the panic away before Keith could grasp onto it and hold.

“ _ Lance _ .”

He glanced up at him. He shook his head, and he told Keith, “I--will you talk to me?”

The panic clawed back up, stronger than before. And, again, Lance chased it off, willed it away because he was selfish and awful and needed to pretend nothing bad might happen. In weeks. In months. In years. Or maybe never at all.

Keith huffed out an exasperated noise. But he also gave in, because he was all the things Lance was not. Selfless and kind and willing to go along with Lance’s ways.

“Alright. What. . .do you want me to talk about?” The words were flavored with a hesitant awkwardness Lance hadn’t heard since late summer, and it brought a tiny smile to his lips. Keith squeezed Lance’s fingers. “What?”

“Tell me about your day,” Lance interrupted. “What did you and Shiro do?”

Keith hesitated. “. . .well, not much. There kinda isn’t a point making a big thing out of it since it’s just the two of us. But, I helped him make wagashi, which is his favorite, and we sat on the balcony while he ate.” Fondness lightened Keith’s heart; Lance sank into the feeling until he felt nothing else. “We used to do that a lot when we were kids, sit outside when it stormed. He used to. . .Shiro would find where Dad hid the cookies, and he’d sneak them outside. We’d huddle under the awning with giant mugs of hot chocolate and eat cookies, whispering so Dad wouldn’t hear us. It felt like we were getting away with something big. But Dad always knew what we were up to. We never could sneak anything by him.” 

Lance smiled knowingly. “I know the feeling,” he laughed. “Try having psychic sisters. Bet they’re the reason I didn’t get away with doing half of the things I wanted to do, now that I’m thinking about it. What else did you two do?”

Keith lifted a shoulder. “We went to the graveyard. Then to where Shiro scattered Adam’s ashes. Then we came home, and I slept until you called.”

“Sorry about that. I worried I'd wake you up.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said, honest. “I was waiting on it anyway.”

Lance tilted his head. “For me to call?”

“Or text,” Keith admitted. “I. . .well, here.”

Keith’s hands vanished as he rummaged around in his pockets. Lance leaned back a little, watching him.

“You didn’t get me something, did you? Keith, you didn’t need to--”

“No. I made it.”

He pulled out a braided bracelet. It looked, almost, like it was made out of a new pair of shoe strings, and it felt like it when Keith tied it around his wrist.

Lance lighted his fingers across it, tracing the delicate pattern, and felt his smile grow. “Don’t tell me. . .laces?”

Keith shrugged again. “Yeah. I thought it was fitting.” Lance looked up at him. He didn’t have to ask  _ what _ . Touching the bracelet, fingers a breath from Lance’s own, Keith answered him anyway, “That’s where it all started.”

_ I always saw you, Lance. _

Here, on his bedroom floor, Lance wondered if either of them had ever looked away.

Keith was looking at him now, expectant, humming with pleasure at his idea, at seeing Lance’s reaction tied up with the strings of the bracelet. He waited quietly, his violet eyes scanning over him, and Lance became aware of everything he held inside: the newly bloomed hunger, but more importantly, his happiness, his love. So many strings, all with their own tune, and Lance knew every single one of their songs.

If Lance told Keith he may die, all the strings would knot up again, twist until the only thing Lance would hear was  _ dread _ and  _ sorrow _ and the heaviness of mourning something still alive.

Which was better?

“Lance?”

There wasn’t an easy choice to make. Not with this. Not, Lance realized, with anything.

Keith opened his mouth, all those happy feelings starting to dim and shift. Lance touched his face, drew in close, and caught him before the moment soured and ruined.

“I love it,” Lance said, his excitement clear as a bell. He wasn’t good at hiding things like that anymore, anyway. If he was excited, the air took on the same charge, and Keith--and Hunk and Pidge--they all knew when something came from him, when the emotions he showed were true or false. “And I love  _ you _ , you giant, sentimental, mullet-headed  _ jerk _ .”

The puff of Keith’s laugh brushed across Lance’s cheeks. “Thanks? I guess?”

"No guessing," Lance confirmed, and kissed him square on the mouth. “And, hey, I have something for you, too.”

Keith blinked at him, but Lance had already got to his feet, following the impulse to his closet, stretching on his tiptoes for a bundle of folded blue shoved on the highest shelf. Tonight, it felt as cool as his bedroom, but the fabric still clung to the scents from the laundry. Keith grabbed at it when Lance fanned the blanket over them as he returned to the floor.

The comforter sagged over their heads, small peaks in the unbroken wash of blue. The room disappeared. It was just Lance, and it was just Keith, and it was the two of them breathing in the same cotton smell and listening to the other shift closer. Keith’s hand slid around the back of Lance’s neck, guiding him forward. Lance followed where he led him and found himself on top of him, head tucked under Keith’s chin, the comforter a steady weight against his back.

Keith's heart raced under his ear, beating and skipping, a human heart no matter what Keith himself believed.

“I like it better warm,” Keith admitted.

Lance rolled his eyes, knowing Keith couldn’t see. “I can throw it in the drier if it’ll help.”

“Actually, no, I changed my mind.” He shifted, rocking Lance with him, and somehow they fit together even better afterwards, Keith’s arms hooked loosely around his back and Lance’s leg slipped between both of Keith’s. “This is perfect.”

Lance laughed.

Under his ear, Keith’s soft chuckle hitched in his chest.

Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. God, Lance wished for months and years and years and  _ years _ of this. Of more moments just like this. Of Veronica’s dreams being just that for once:  _ Dreams _ .

“Merry Christmas, Lance.”

Lance squeezed his eyes shut and pushed everything else out of his head. He didn’t have room for worry, for doubt, for anything to tip Keith off that something bad might be brewing.

So instead of making what he knew would be the right choice, Lance picked the easy way out, and as he turned his face into the warmth of Keith’s throat, he told him, “Merry Christmas, Keith” in return.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


It rained again the following day, softer but steadier, without clean breaks in the weather. It felt like spring outside, muggy and humid, and Lance left the house without a jacket, running through the slick streets of Indigo Pull with his shoulders hunched against the fine mist, umbrella forgotten in his rush.

Sometime around seven, Keith woke Lance up with a murmur and a stolen kiss, then vanished through the window to return home. Lance missed him immediately when he left, but Keith's voice still rumbled in his ear, the gentle apology nestled in his words understood if not the words themselves.

Lance must’ve dozed off again after, because he woke up somehow on his bed, tucked beneath his quilt, Keith and the blue comforter missing from his room and his phone chirupping from the bedside table.

Lance pulled up the messages again as he walked. Small beads of rain bubbled against the screen, magnifying all the wrong words.

_ SOS _

_ Lance I need you here. Please. _

_ I wouldn’t ask, but _

Pidge never finished. Lance interrupted him before he could, texted back that he was already on his way, and leapt out of bed, tugging on the first few things his hands found in his closet that would cover the fresh bruise at the base of his throat.

Through the mists, the familiar outline of the Holt Manor rose, dripping wet like the rest of the early morning world. Resplendently dressed in several, colorful layers of blinking lights, the house, from it's heavy, oak door to the warm light spilling out from the windows to the third stair’s resilient creak--all of it welcomed Lance home.

Even though he hadn’t been back since Halloween, Lance found the door opened just as easily under his hand. That the lobby stairs popped and settled in quiet greeting, that the grandfather clock seemed to smile the time at him as he stepped inside. The house missed him as much as Lance missed it, and Lance took a moment, a single second, to drape his hand over the smooth banister like another glittering bundle of tinsel, absorbing everything he saw. . .

. . .and  _ felt _ .

Lance bolted up the stairs, sentimentality falling behind him. 

Footsteps, thunderous as the storm the day before, sounded down the hall. And then--

Pidge, breathless, devoured from throat to knees in a hideous green sweater, lurched to a hurried halt at the top of the stairs.

"You're here," he said, thankful down to his bones. What he really said was _ , you ran all the way here, didn't you? _

Lance’s soaked shoes left vanishing prints in the carpet. Which was fine. The house didn't mind. In fact, if the manor were a living thing, it would have welcomed Lance dragging in puddles over not coming in at all.

"Yeah, man, I got here as fast as I could." What he really said was,  _ of course I ran all the way. And I'll do it every time you need me. _ He glanced up the stairs as familiar as the ones in his own home, and started climbing them two at a time. "What's wrong? What's the  _ SOS _ ?"

Lance knew as soon as he asked it.

Something dark and heavy pushed against his awareness, alien and strange, like hearing thunder on a sunny, clear-skied day.

Lance’s steps faltered, a stair clipped, nearly missed. He caught himself on the railing; Pidge caught him with his worried eyes, his glasses shining as he turned his head. Something crashed distantly, and the pressure inside Lance’s head grew.

"Matt."

Later, Lance wouldn’t remember who said his name or if they had said it together, only that it sharpened his clarity, and he knew what he needed to do.

“How long,” Lance asked when he reached Pidge. They didn’t wait--the two took off down the dimly lit hallway, all the oil paintings eyeing them as they whipped by.

Pidge just shook his head. His insides, usually so impeccably ordered, thrashed around, everything throwing off bells and whistles and warning lights. It distracted Lance almost as much as Matt’s mounting--what was it? Anger? Fear? Nothing like Matt at all.

“I didn’t know what else to do, who else to ask,” Pidge said in a breathless rush. “Shiro’s been here. Dad’s tried to talk to him. Mom has.  _ I  _ have, but, Lance, he’s not listening to us. He won’t come out of his room and--” 

A muffled cry of frustration, followed by another muted  _ boom _ of something hitting a wall deep within the house. 

Pidge’s heart lurched. Lance felt Sam Holt’s attention snap up, tighten, and Colleen’s deep well of concern swallow her whole. 

Lance let it all go, tuned solely to Matt’s emotions, and latched on. They pitched and moved, like the sea, like clouds, the weather a confusion of storms and broken skies.  _ He’s trying to fight it _ , he thought wildly. But fight what?

It was easy enough to answer, however much it hurt to think:  _ Himself _ .

Matt Holt always wanted to prove himself. That was the thing that always led him into trouble. He had to  _ be _ somebody. No. Not that. He  _ was _ somebody, and he'd prove it. Not to you, but to himself.

His early years were shockingly similar to Pidge's, days full of advanced classes and evenings dedicated to experimentations that sometimes worked and sometimes scorched his eyebrows off. A love of math and science advanced into adoring theoretical statistics and chemistry. He built his own supercomputer from bits and bobbles he collected in his junior year of high school. He fancied himself an engineer scientist like his father and a chemical biologist like his mother, all balled into one. Matt was just as smart as Pidge--smarter, even, if you asked for Pidge's opinion on the matter--and by fifteen, he had his choice of colleges reaching out to him, offering scholarships and grants, years of work study and apprenticeships, quid pro quo. Being the child of two reknown scientists and having the Holt family name didn't hinder his choice of prospects.

For a time, Matt's world was of endless, glowing opportunity. Everything he dreamed for was within touching distance, waiting for him.

And he couldn't stand it. 

Pidge said Matt didn't want a free ride into an Ivy League. He didn't want bribed in by a convenient slip of their father's name. Half the Holt fortune was his, and he wouldn't touch it, not for this, not for something he could earn.

He wanted to make his own way.

Ignoring the protests that followed the decision, Matt signed up for the military, same as his father had, all those years ago. He ended up placed in the same consignment as Shiro and Samuel Holt--from luck or because of his last name or both--and the rest, they say, was history.

And the history led to this:

A room cluttered with debris from a past life. Bookshelves heavy with texts that hadn't seen the light in years. A computer, screen clicked off, resetting in one corner atop its nest of neatly arranged wires, emitting a soft, soothing hum from several internal fans. A desk lamp, bright bulb facing the wall, offered a crescent of half-light over the odd mix of these two Matts--the one that was before and the one the war returned home. It gleamed across a box of steel cording, spilled over a frame holding a smiling picture of Matt in his military uniform, all his badges and medals bright pops of color and gold and pride. Forgotten notepads lay bent on top of a dresser. Shirts waterfalled down a single, ransacked drawer. A table lay toppled over--the culprit of the noise Lance heard earlier, he'd bet--all the things that used to be on it dashed across the floor.

And in the middle of it all, standing with his back towards them, heaving and shaking, was Matt. 

Everything about him--that Lance could see, could  _ sense _ \--was heavy, muted, and numb. 

And in the next instant, it ignited. Burned in frustration, fury, and a feeling so familiar to Lance that it caught him off-guard.

Self-loathing.

Lance caught his hand on the doorframe.

Pidge ducked under his arm and stepped into the room, his heart taunt with dismay. "Matt? Matt, hey, it's okay--"

Ever at Matt's side, Bae Bae whined softly. She bunted her head against Matt's leg, leaned her weight against him, waiting with a patience that only partially came from her expensive training. 

Matt's shoulders jerked up. He settled a shaking hand on the dog's head, fingers curling in her fur, urging her aside. "Go," he pleaded. To Bae Bae. Probably to Pidge, too. "Just  _ go _ ."

Pidge didn't budge. Neither did Bae Bae. Lance among them was the only one to move, and he went forward instead of backward, stepping carefully over the awards and trinkets littering the floor.

He stopped within reaching distance, but that didn't matter. How he needed to sooth and heal didn't involve touch. At least, not of that kind. 

"Hey, Matt," Lance tried. Confusion speared through the storm clouds--a bolt of lightning, sharp and bright. Matt turned, eyes widening slightly, the emotion clear across his face as it was inside.

Matt blinked like he wanted to clear his vision, and when it failed and Lance was still there, he shook his head and took a step back. "You can't be here," he said, voice dripping with uncertainty.

Lance frowned. "What do you mean? I'm--"

"Dead," Matt breathed. "I saw you. You  _ died _ ."

Pidge grabbed Lance's arm, steadying him. "No," he said calmly. "This is Lance. He's  _ here _ , Matt, he's right here. He's not who you think he is."

Matt didn't seem to hear them. The light in his eyes dimmed, and he drew away from them in every way possible. "My fault," he said, under his breath, a mock prayer for someone refusing to forget the past. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry--"

It fractured Pidge. He looked back at him, his wide, hazel eyes pleading. "I don't know if you can do anything, but, I thought, if there was even a little chance you could help, please,  _ please _ , Lance. I can't--"

"It's okay." Lance laid his hand over Pidge's, easing away his distress with everything he had. Partially magic, partially by telling him, "He's my brother, too."

Pidge's eyes welled. Lance urged that away too, with a brush of warmth he hoped Pidge felt. It came easier to help Pidge, as familiar as they were to each other. Matt's emotions were volatile and sought to bury the both of them, and were harder to forgive. 

They felt, in a way, like Keith's. Only not tangles and knots, but skies heavy with cloud fronts and tempests as sudden and severe as his rages. Lance dropped his hand from Pidge's, watched in silence as Pidge stepped back, as if Lance needed physical space to work in.

Guilt blanketed the fury, brought alive by Lance, by the person Matt confused him to be. It chewed him up, spat him out, and the rage started to surge again, frustration at this loss overwhelming logic and sense.

Lance shut his eyes.

His first reaction was to hook in and tear it all out. Pull the plug on every negative feeling before it gathered power.

But that wasn't who he was anymore.

The memory of Nadia running through the living room hit him, all at once, her hands flashing out toward the chestnuts he and Sylvio threw her way, her bare feet streaking through the room. He could hear the shells break apart under her magic,  _ pop pop pop _ !, perfuming the air with smoke and burning. 

_ They're called gifts for a reason. And they're  _ ours.

Lance wouldn't absorb Matt's suffering. That wasn't why Pidge called him here. He wasn't a lightning rod, a weather vane, something a storm could conquer and bend.

Carefully, Lance  _ pressed  _ against Matt's turmoil, softly, softly.  _ Encourage _ , he thought, and encourage he did. 

All emotions had two sides: the good and the bad. Lance recognized guilt's opposite was gratitude, and he breathed the emotion into him. It wasn't true change, only the suggestion  _ to  _ change. To see it would be all right to move on, let the past be in the past. But only if Matt wanted to. If he wanted to heal, then Lance would do the rest.

A whine hit the air.

Startled, Lance opened his eyes again, glancing down at Bae Bae.

The dog regarded him with knowing, black eyes, her tail wagging lazily behind her.

But she wasn't the one who had made the noise.

Looking up, Lance saw Matt's contorted face, the tears still wet on his cheeks, and realized his mistake.

"No," Matt said again, chest heaving, the heels of his hands drilling into his eyes, forcing back his tears. Pain shook the clouds of his heart. "You don't understand. It's my fault. I did it. I saw it before we. . .I-I should've, if only I had grabbed the wheel, I--Shiro, he--McPatrick might still--"

His voice trailed off the moment Lance laid his hands against his arm.

Pain was easiest to take.

But also the easiest to mend.

"Whatever it is, Matt, it's not your fault. Nothing that happened is your fault." Lance didn't know if what he was doing would help or would go ignored, if Matt even heard him or knew he was there. His mind was stuck in the past, relieving those traumas as if they were fresh. "No one blames you, I promise. Only you do, Matt."

Matt dropped his hands. His breath came in heaving gulps. At his legs, Bae Bae pressed against him, the anchor back to this moment, doing her best to offer all the comfort she could.

Lance watched one of Matt's hands shift, then fall, touching the top of her head again. He was met with a tentative lick across his palm, and that, that small thing, hitched Matt's breathing.

The storm clouds started to break apart.

"I-I--I keep having these-- _ nightmares _ ," he rattled on, unaware he was speaking. His spark of surprise kindled in Lance's own chest. "I can't sleep. If I do, I'll see them. All--all the blood and the screaming--"

Matt locked eyes with Lance suddenly, his expression pleading. "Do you hear them?"

Behind them, Pidge stepped forward. Lance felt him at his back before his hands even reached his shirt. ". . .no one's screaming, Matt. You're home."

Disbelief punched Lance in the ribs, the drowsy sense of realization sharpening his focus. No, not his. 

Matt blinked and surveyed the room.

Lance bled his clarity into him, willing the clouds away with all the hopefulness of a child puffing out their cheeks and blowing away the fuzzy heads of dandelion stalks, placing all their faith on wishes.

It was like Matt woke up.

The guilt lifted, the anger at himself. The fear of what had happened to him dissolving into background noise. There still, but a little softer, a little easier to ignore. When Matt looked back, his eyes were bright--with tears, yes, but also recognition.

"Pidge," he breathed, question softening all the vowels in his mouth.

"I'm here."

Lance moved out of the way, Pidge filling up the space in an instant, his relief a beacon slashing through the weight of everything Matt felt. His hand remained against Matt's arm, tamping down all the bad things that wanted to take over, a touch Matt didn't seem aware of.

Lance used the moment to his advantage.

His mother once sent him to sleep with a single bite from a thumbprint cookie, and once, Lance devoured a dinner roll to clear the onslaught of panic racing through his head. Her magic understood what a person needed and gave them the means to achieve it.

Could he do something like that?

Over the last few weeks, Veronica's exhaustion haunted her and him both. So sensing it in Matt didn't surprise him, not after his confession. Lance already knew about the nightmares--it wasn't exactly a secret. Those were Matt's scars he brought back from war, as visible as Samuel Holt's distracted mind or Shiro's missing arm. The prices paid for surviving the thing now pulling Matt back under.

_ You’re home, _ he thought, borrowing Pidge’s words. Lance wasn't Rachel, this wasn't where his abilities could touch, but it helped Lance keep from slipping back into his old habits.  _ Focus on that. _

Then, without dwelling on the possibility of if it might work or fail, or if it was the right thing to do, Lance coaxed Matt’s exhaustion out like a blanket. Snapped it out like a downy, blue comforter.

Matt glanced his way--

\--and dropped.

Pidge cried out. Lance was already there, hooking his arms under Matt’s, easing him down to the floor. His head lolled to the side, his staccato breathing settled in the unmistakable ease of sleep. Bae Bae inspected him with soft licks and nudges, folding up beside him on the floor, her body laying stretched along Matt’s.

“Shit,” Lance murmured. He looked over at Pidge, the barrage of his worry filtering into understanding and, finally, awe.

“Wait, that was you?” Pidge crouched beside his brother, fingers brushing aside his hair, examining his face with a keen eye. Lance ignored the surprise shot his way. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“To be honest, I didn’t think it would work. It’s something mom can do.” Lance chewed on his lower lip as he explained, “She told me that you can’t just. . .heal. You have to encourage it to happen, and whoever you’re healing  _ wants _ to get better, otherwise it won’t work.” He took a breath. Dizziness swooned over him, which he stubbornly ignored. Maybe he wasn’t exactly  _ kind _ when he encouraged Matt to sleep. That was something else he needed to work on.

Pidge hummed contemplatively. “It really isn’t magic,” he said to himself, as if he wasn’t already aware of it. Then, he looked up suddenly, eyes fierce. “But what about his nightmares? He won’t--”

Lance interrupted, “I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t think I could do it. But he was exhausted, Pidge. Like, he was a  _ lot _ \--angry, mostly, and full of guilt. Not sleeping made it all ten-times worse. I thought. . .I thought if he rested, it might dull everything down again. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, but it was the only thing I could think of to keep the cycle from repeating.”

“And you didn’t know it would work,” Pidge added. His hands were still brushing the fine strands of hair away from were they stuck on Matt’s tear-tracks. The sight sent a pang through Lance’s heart, the emotion all his own. “How’s he feeling now?”

Lance considered. “Not as bad. Everything gets dull when people sleep. It’s. . .not like it was.” Fear and frustration clotting the air, fury--at himself, at what happened, at a past he couldn’t change--darkening everything else he felt. The table on the floor evidence of it spiralling out of hand. “I’m sorry.”

Pidge shook his head. “You don’t need to be sorry. You’re right. He did need to sleep. I’ve been hearing him pace in his room all week.” He pulled back his hands, sighing to himself, shoulders sagging. “I just. . .”

He didn’t finish.

Lance answered the unspoken question. “He’s not, not right now. I don’t know if he’s dreaming at all, but if he is, they don’t feel like nightmares. Trust me. Veronica--” He hesitated, continued, “--she deals with a lot of bad dreams herself.”

The smile Pidge gave him was full of irony. “Guess our siblings are kind of the same with that. Their bad dreams are real.”

Lance winced but couldn’t argue.

Matt didn’t weigh nearly as much as Lance worried he might, and the two of them managed to hoist him back into his bed without much issue. A small victory in its own right, Lance reasoned. The thought of Matt waking up on the floor, out of sorts, didn’t set well with him.

They stayed in Matt’s room while morning gave way to afternoon, the shift unnoticed through the heavy rainfall, tidying up the discarded things thrown about. Every so often, Lance wandered back to Matt whenever he felt the first breath of fear, and touched his fingers to his forehead, chasing off bad dreams before they festered.

Each time, Lance felt Pidge’s eyes on his back, his gratitude read loud and clear.

And each time it wore him down. The dizziness built, staggered his steps, and he stubbornly ignored it, helped Pidge fold all the clothes Matt had thrown around, helped him tidy and pick up, whatever it was that needed to be done. It was the final time he tried to chase off Matt’s bad dreams when Pidge grabbed his wrist and held him back.

“Lance,” he warned, and suddenly his concerned eyes were  _ for _ him, not just directed his way.

Lance sagged a bit. Rubbed his hand down his face in a fool’s attempt to dislodge some of his own exhaustion--or so he hoped--eating away at his quickly fading attention. “I’m fine,” he said immediately, shaking off Pidge’s touch.

“Shut up,” Pidge snapped back, not unkindly. The day had been a long one, so even if he  _ had _ said it meanly, Lance would’ve forgiven him in half-a-heartbeat. The instant it left his mouth. “You’re barely here.”

Felt like that. Lance didn’t want to tell Pidge that, though, and he shrugged and shook his head. “No. I’m fine. I told you.”

“Liar.” Pidge sighed. “Maybe you should lay down. You can go lay down in my bed, if you want--”

“No.” Lance didn’t know why he said it quite like that, quickly, without pause.

Pidge wasn’t bothered by it, if there was something to be bothered by it at all. “I’ll get dad to drive us to your house, then.”

Again, Lance refused. “No.” He couldn’t imagine sitting stuffed inside the Holt’s BMW, fighting a losing battle from saying or doing something stupid with Pidge’s dad eyeing him the entire time through the rearview mirror. All he wanted was to go home. “I’ll walk home. It’s no big deal.”

“Then I’ll walk with you,” Pidge said, stubborn down to his toes. This was what it was: A thank you and an apology all wrapped in one.

Lance didn’t want it, any of it.

“I appreciate it, Pidge, but you should stay with him.”

They both glanced at Matt, still soundly asleep, Bae Bae laying at his side.

Pidge softened. Just a little. Enough. “If you’re going to refuse everything else,” Pidge tried. “Can I at least give you an umbrella to take? It’s still pouring outside.”

Lance, too, gave in. “I guess I can do that.”

He left the house minutes later, an old umbrella in one hand, Pidge’s tight goodbye hug haunting his shoulders, and set off towards home, leaving the weight of the Holt’s behind him with every, splashing step through the drowning streets.

  
  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Matt woke late that afternoon, starving and clear-headed, feeling better than he had in months, if he was being honest with himself, or in days, if he wasn't. 

Foggy light shone in through the windows, highlighting the new order of his room in shades of gray. The mess of his clothes gone; the dresser drawers all uniformly shut. Science awards and trophies sat on the table where they’d always been. The blankets were the only thing out of place, twisted around his ankles, half-kicked off sometime as he slept. 

Bae Bae lay at one side of him, Pidge at the other, both of them dozing softly.

He scratched Bae Bae's chin with one hand, and lay the other in Pidge's tousled hair. 

A part of him clicked into place.

He wouldn't remember Lance coming over or anything that followed after. It all felt dreamy and surreal, out of focus, and the longer he tried to hold on to the wisps of it--the light pressure of hands, a calm voice, a buoyancy in his chest--the faster it faded. Like grabbing at smoke, it was pointless to try.

He did remember the nightmares. The orange sand erupting. A sky on fire,  _ actual fire _ , dense clouds of black smoke blotting out the sun. Metal screaming, his father screaming, Shiro's still face streaked with dust and gore. The tang of blood heavy in his mouth, splattering the ground, running down his face. A tea-kettle whine in his ears, dimming the distant sound of helicopter blades slicing through the acrid air.

No. Not that.

It was Bae Bae he heard, whimpering softly, her cold nose pressed against his arm, snapping him back. Shakily, he stroked her ears, let out a grateful breath, and turned towards Pidge, ruffling his hair until he woke up and swatted his hand away with an intelligible grumble.

_ You’re home _ , he told himself, watching Pidge sit up and shoot a blearily glare his way.  _ Focus on this. _

At least for today. Tomorrow could wait.

Matt wondered about that later, as he and Pidge ate what appeared to be part of a Christmas dinner Matt didn't remember joining: 

The voice in his head when he repeated those things didn't sound like his own. 

But if it wasn't his. . .

Then whose?

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Time moves like a river, and it reacts like one if you try to tamper it. If you throw a stone into the water, the ripples will eventually find the shore no matter where the stone hit. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, the impact of a single moment could have lasting, far-reaching effects. 

Several things happened all at once, around the time Matt woke up from his half-remembered dreams. Ripples finally finding the riverbank. 

Across town, outside of the wage-based apartment where he now lived, Keith crept to a halt just shy of going inside, his brow worried in a knot. Through the cheap metal door and the porous, white plaster, he heard the murmur of voices. Plural. Shiro's was one of them, the other--

_ No _ .

Keith wouldn't allow himself to think it. 

But even after all this time, he knew that voice. He dreamed of it sometimes, speaking his name or softly singing. He thought, often, of the face that went with it; the moment in the Holt's with Lance, feeling the warmth of him standing so close.

_ You look just like her _ , Lance had breathed, the flutter of his fingers against Keith's jaw warming him all the way through. Months ago. Ages ago. The moment suddenly alive again, lived again.

Shiro's voice canted upwards, a yell barely trimmed back. " _ No,  _ you  _ should have come back sooner! Don't pretend like you didn't know what-- _ "

He didn't want to hear it, whatever it was Shiro implied, and he wanted to hear the answer even less.

Keith threw open the door, killing the rest of what Shiro tried to say, meeting his startled stare from across the kitchen counter, refusing, again, to acknowledge the other shift of movement in the small room.

Until he betrayed himself, and his eyes drifted and he found her, a vision ripped straight from the only picture he had of his family still intact.

She stood straighter at the sight of him.

Every mote of Keith's resolve blew away at the look on her face, so soft and sorry.

Time is like a river, remember? Vast and wide and flowing quickly towards the sea. No one knew any better.

They were all on the same course to this single moment, when, after years and years, a broken family reformed. Because  _ she _ was finally, impossibly, back in Indigo Pull.

Back  _ home. _

Caught between the front door and freedom at his back, between belief and disbelief, between wanting to run to her and run away, Keith could only ask, "Mom?"

. . .at the exact moment, further away, caught between the Holt's and the promise of home, Lance McClain went missing.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE THE REST OF THE CHAPTER:
> 
> This is the chapter that gets Real Heavy, okay?? Like, whenever I would think of this chapter, I'd call it the crux in my head, cause this is the moment a few things come rushing together. Please be warned, the violence jumps up in this quite a bit, especially around the end.

_ Before. . . _

It was the tension in the room that made it difficult to breathe--that had to be it. Keith refused to think it was because his heart couldn’t slow down and threatened to punch clean past his ribcage with every passing second. In fact, he refused to think much at all about anything, especially the fact that his mom--his  _ mom _ \--stood a scant ten feet away, leaning against the counter-- _ his _ counter,  _ Shiro’s _ counter--as if she belonged there. As if she took her coffee there in the mornings, or spent the last month eating her dinners there.

As if she’d never left Indigo Pull.

For a scary second, Keith wondered if he’d failed to notice her around. Had she been here all along, walking the same sidewalks, shopping in the same tired grocery store, getting gas at one of the two stations in town, taking her lunches alone at the diner? He spent so much of the last year holed up in abandoned places, laying low, hiding away. . .that maybe she’d been back for a long, long time. Maybe Keith forgot to look for her in everything like he still looked for his Pops and missed her pass by. Maybe the years did funny things to his memories. She didn’t  _ look _ any different as she stood there, holding his eyes, body leaned oh-so-casually towards him like they weren’t strangers. 

But the way she looked at him. . . _ that _ was different.

Or had she always looked at him like that, with sad, pleading eyes?

Keith couldn’t remember.

He took a step back.

The second he did, the tension  _ snapped _ . He could  _ feel _ it, the moment stretching and stretching, like a rubber band, until it gave. Shiro stood up, his chair scraping across the floor. His mom didn’t move, which was somehow worse. Was this how Lance always felt? Was this what his empathy was like? Keith’s hand caught on the doorframe and he pushed back, pivoting on his heel, ready to run. To hell with his mom. To hell with Shiro and the apartment and every question crowding the space around him.

He couldn’t do this.

He  _ wouldn’t _ do this.

_ I need Lance _ , Keith thought desperately, and it lit him up, pushed aside the advancing hurt like a torch against darkness.

If he could get to Lance, he would feel better. They would talk--no,  _ Keith _ would talk. The words were already there, scratching up his throat. Lance would catch them all, listen to each fragmented thing, and he’d make sure everything was alright. Whatever pieces Keith had left, Lance would rearrange them and put them back together again.

Keith managed one step forward before Shiro grabbed his arm.

All his hope crashed into his stomach, leaden stones.

“Keith--Keith, wait, please--” Shiro squeezed his wrist, an unspoken plea. “Just let her talk. Let. . .let  _ us _ talk.”

_ Us _ ?

Going against his better judgement, Keith turned back.

Shiro’s face instantly brightened, if only by a fraction.

Keith refused to glance further into the apartment. Even when he heard the heavy fall of her boots coming towards them, he kept his eyes on Shiro, only Shiro. He’d spent so much of his life looking for that he didn’t owe her another second of his time.

“What do you mean,  _ us _ ,” he asked. He yanked his arm away, ignored how pain twisted across Shiro’s face, flashed in his dark eyes. “Why--how--you know what? I can’t do this.”

“Keith.”

That was it. One word. She said one, single word and Keith felt the world buckle around him. He closed his eyes, stepped back, digging heels of his hands against his eyes until stars bloomed and exploded into ache and color.

There was a time, once, that same voice used to sing him to sleep.

There was a time, once, when that voice didn’t say goodbye, even though it could have. It  _ should _ have.

Why did everyone leave him without saying  _ goodbye _ , without saying anything at all?

“No, stop it. You left. You  _ left me _ \--” 

Keith heard Shiro’s soft intake of breath, the harsh way it slid past his teeth. But he also heard Krolia sigh out, and how it shivered in the air, low and heavy. A dual blow.

She didn’t deny it. 

“I did,” she said. “I left. And I’ve thought about that night more than anything else, but, Keith, you have to understand, I’m not sorry I did it.”

A new, worse kind of pain lanced through Keith’s chest, startled him enough,  _ hurt  _ him enough, his arms went slack. She stood closer than he thought she’d be, as close as Shiro, close enough to touch him like Shiro had. But she didn’t. Her stiff arms and curled fists said she wouldn’t.

And why did he want her to? Why did he wait for it even when he knew it wasn’t coming?

She kept talking, even though Keith stood there, breaking into pieces. Couldn’t she see that? Or did she not care?

“I’m only sorry it didn’t help,” she told him softly, and only him, because Keith finally understood, all at once, why she must be here after being absent an entire decade. 

Keith remembered Shiro’s lack of surprise, his utter, unfailing acceptance when he told him the biggest secret he had, the weight of Shiro’s arm around his shoulders as sure as ever. The days that came after, the ease of it, like nothing had changed. He’d been so grateful, so unfathomably relieved, that Keith credited it to  _ love _ and Shiro’s constant, solid understanding. But that wasn’t it, was it?

At least, that wasn’t  _ all _ of it.

With Lance, it’d been different. With Lance, they’d chased each other through storm and shadow until Lance finally made him forget, for a few hours, what it was like to be miserable. He’d asked questions, tried to trace his teeth with his curious fingers, and he sat with him, shivering. From the cold, from the rain, from Keith being a real, live thing he could touch. He was never scared like Shiro had never been scared, but there was something off about it. Lance asked his question because he was curious. Shiro asked his like it was the expected thing to do. He made promises about taking away all the silver and garlic, buying blackout curtains for the whole house--things that, now that Keith thought back on, had already been done long before their awkward conversation in the kitchen.

This kitchen.

Near to this very spot.

Keith turned and fired at Shiro. 

“You knew.” If words were bullets, they would have struck Shiro at close range. He would have bled across the dull, linoleum floor, torn apart from the truth. “Fuck, you  _ knew _ .”

“Keith, wait, please, just hear us out.” Shiro didn’t grab for him again. The want of it crawled up his arm, tensed in his muscles, squirmed in his clenched fingers. But he didn’t dare. Keith didn’t know what he’d do if Shiro tried. Shake him off. Sink into it willingly. A combo of both, a paradox of wants transforming his heart into a blackhole that consumed them all.

“This entire time--_you knew what I was_?”

Keith’s voice ran away from him, pitched towards shouting. He couldn’t move his feet. They felt glued to the floor. Behind him, around him, the soft commotion of neighbors ambling closer to their doors hit his ears. Someone unlatched a lock. Another flipped open an old phone, dialing three numbers in quick succession. A lone dog sensed his distress, and wailed.

The lights suddenly burst into color, wavelengths of green-magenta-yellow; white shattered into all of its parts. Keith wanted to say something else, tried to, but his mouth felt wrong, too full.

Krolia grabbed him.

In the quiet second Keith wondered over the strength of her grip, she hurled him backwards into the apartment, just as the first door opened down the hall, and Shiro hurriedly snapped theirs shut.

His hip struck the sharp corner of the counter, the plastic veneer ripping past his shirt. He wore the one with the cowboy boots, the ugly, stupid shirt Lance picked out for him because it was funny--and since it made Lance laugh, it made Keith smile, and Lance used that as proof that Keith liked it just as much.

He didn’t.

But he liked that Lance bought it for him and gave it to him and it came from him. He liked how it fit and how it expanded whenever Lance slid his hands up underneath, and he liked how it bunched beneath his arms when Lance ran out of room.

Now his blood wicked into the dark fabric. He smelled it, hot iron and salt.

His stomach rolled over. Dot swam across his vision like clouds over sky.

Across the room, Shiro looked stricken. “You hurt him,” he bit. Finally his tone aligned to the one Keith had heard out in the hallway, right before he dared opening the door to see what he already knew waited inside. “He’s bleeding!”

She did look. Her eyes dipped low, studied the frayed line in his shirt, and Keith just. . . _ let  _ her. His head was a mess, his heart raged and rioted, and he was one wrong breath away from hurling himself off the balcony to the road below.

“He’ll be fine,” she said, as if she could see the cut raked across his skin. As if she knew him. “A scratch, and I didn’t mean--”

“It doesn’t  _ matter _ if it’s just a scratch, Krolia, this isn’t some--”

Keith slammed his fist against the counter. 

The sheer force dented the plastic as easily as if he’d crumpled a styrofoam cup. “Stop it.  _ Stop _ talking about me like I can’t hear you!”

Krolia hadn’t looked away from him. She folded her arms, and her eyes shot up to his, holding his glare without flinching. “Then listen to us.”

“And why should I? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just  _ leave _ .” Keith injected as much venom as he possibly could into the word, which wasn’t hard. He’d been holding on to it for years.

It hit its mark, but Krolia only dropped her arms and let it hit.

It was uncanny, seeing his eyes on her face. They were the same violet color, like  _ plums _ or  _ the underbellies of thunderheads _ as Lance would say. He always had a thousand names for the same thing. Keith’s eyes had only ever been  _ purple _ until Lance decided they were so much more.

What would he say to all this? This mess of a reunion?

What would he  _ feel _ ?

Keith already knew what he’d do.

Shiro stepped up, and side-by-side, Keith could see he was shorter than Krolia by only a hair. He took up more space in different ways, by the width of his shoulders, and the anger rolling off of him, as intense as heat shimmering off tarmac in July. 

“Because we owe it to you, Keith,” Shiro explained, his tone cooler, the anger reserved for someone else. Keith heard his brother, the one who’d sneak cookies out into rain storms or stories into his room after bad dreams. The brother who loved  _ him _ . The brother  _ he _ loved. “There’s so much we need to tell you. But I couldn’t. Not alone.”

It didn’t make any sense. Why not just tell him in the first place?

Why hide it, then lie about it when Keith finally gathered the nerve to confess it?

Keith wanted to hit the counter again. If he did, it would break off, he knew it would, and he had a panicked thought of  _ how are we going to explain this _ before he snatched his hands away. He racked his fingers back through his hair instead, snagging against knots and tangles he tore at in his frustration. Dark curls drifted towards the floor. Shiro was supposed to be the one person who Keith's trust in never faltered. “What! Then  _ what _ ! Why couldn’t you say anything to me!”

It wasn’t Shiro who answered him.

It was Krolia.

“Because,” she said. “I’m the reason you were turned.”

_ ♰♰♰ _

_ During _ . . .

Rain soaked through Lance’s shirt, his skin, weaviled down until it had nowhere else to go except his very bones.

Though the day had started warm, the consistent rain sliced the temperature down by the hour, wicking away some of the out-of-place humidity with a shivering chill Lance couldn’t shake.

Really, it was his own fault for leaving his jacket at home.

The missing umbrella, however, was all the wind’s doing.

He’d barely made it down the hill before a gale rushed him and snapped Pidge’s umbrella from his wet fingers. It sailed away in a flashy display of cartwheels and sharp, dragging impacts through the mud. Lance, after watching it go with a grimace, resignedly ran after it.

He knew it was stupid, with the weather and his own tiredness weighing him down, but he couldn’t shake the thought of explaining to Pidge that a gust of wind had got the better of him and had tossed the umbrella into the river. As if Pidge didn’t have multiple umbrellas or the Holt’s didn’t boast two full umbrella stands by the front door, some with the price tags still dangling from their handles. Like Pidge wouldn’t just laugh it off and tease him for misplacing it. Then again, after today, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d do what the Holt’s did best and grow solemn and tell him something like,  _ after what you did, an umbrella is nothing _ or  _ I owe you a lot more than that for how you helped Matt _ .

Suddenly Lance understood why Shiro was always so keen on redirecting the conversation whenever the Holt’s brought up ‘repaying him’, however subtle they thought they were being.

It made it sound like Shiro had done what he’d done for favors and glory and all the messy things that come out of saving a life-- _ lives _ .

Lance grew more uncomfortable by the minute, and it had little to do with the rain.

The umbrella snagged on a thatch of catweed, the rubber handle jutting out over the water.  _ Here I am _ , it seemed to say, in a taunting way. Wind pushed at it, at Lance, but they were, at that point, too stubborn to let it do much more than annoy them.

Lance darted towards the bank.

Feet skidding in the mud, Lance pinwheeled his arms to regain his balance, an aggravated noise pushing past his lips.

He wanted to go home. Take a hot shower, bundle up in his bed, and text Pidge to see how Matt was doing. Then call Keith, ask him over, and sleep curled up against him. Or on top of him. Or underneath. The specifics weren't terribly important.

_ Just leave the umbrella then, stupid _ , he argued with himself, even as he picked his way down the soft slope leading towards the river. There wasn’t much of a bank anymore--the constant, winter rain rose the water level up to the grassline, and painted the water a nasty, muddy color. The roar of it beat out the rush of the driving rain.

Lance rubbed the water from his eyes. Took a second to breathe, then stepped up to where the umbrella was, arm reaching out over the water, fingers brushing over the slick handle.

A familiar blast of anger shot through him, sick and heavy.

He stumbled. Turned.

He caught a glimpse of taillights, a wash of blue, and a folded hand sailing towards him right before it struck.

Bright bursts of pain sang through his skull, then plummeting vertigo as someone shoved a bag over his head. Grabbed his arms and yanked them back. Drove a foot into his stomach before he could gather the air to scream.

And then he fell, slipping away, the moments a kaleidoscope of pain, darkness, and movement. An engine squealed to life. Voices murmured to one another in hysterical whispers.

The vehicle lurched forward. 

Lance slid, damp clothes like oil against the leather seats. His forehead cracked against glass, and for a blissful second, the world dulled.

Went quiet.

Held its breath.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


It felt like someone struck him in the head.

Pain exploded through his skull, raced down his throat, his shoulder, and Keith staggered, vaulted to the side--

\--and then it stopped as suddenly as it happened, leaving a naked wash of cold dread in its wake.

Krolia stepped towards him, like she had any right, at the same moment Shiro reached for his arm, steadying him from swooning to the floor.

Keith pushed them both away, heaving, arms shaking, legs shaking, his whole body threatening to unspool into atoms.

Something was wrong. Something was very,  _ very _ wrong.

_ Lance _ .

Keith grabbed the counter for balance. The plastic broke away this time, without so much as a fight. It crumbled to dust in his fist, scattered to the carpet below, stuck to his sweating palm.

From somewhere far away, Keith heard Shiro say his name. He'd said it like that once before, fissured in the middle, broken into two syllables. The hardest night of Keith's life started at exactly 2:28 a.m., the landline screaming, his cell phone ringing, Shiro standing in the doorway looking like a one-armed monster who forgot to conceal his shadow.

" _ Keith _ ."

There wasn't any time.

Keith didn't question his instincts, didn't care if they were blown out of focus by panic and by seeing his mother's face. _ I'm the reason you were turned _ . No.  _ No. _ He pushed the thought aside, the sickening swoop of fear gnawing at his stomach.

He ran.

Krolia knew what he was aiming for and she darted, impossibly fast, after him.

But Keith, as an actual, impossible thing, was faster.

The balcony door snapped open. A rush of cold, biting wind surged inside, stinking of rain and asphalt, car exhaust and the blood on Keith's shirt. There wasn't any time to look, to waste, to answer Shiro's plea to  _ stop _ .

Keith grabbed the iron railing and catapulted his body over, seconds before Krolia reached him, reached out, missed. He hit the ground solidly, knees taking most of the impact, a flare of pain that diminished in a heartbeat, and he bounced up, bolting down the road as fast as he could, without looking back.

_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lance came to as someone hurled him out of the truck and dumped him on the ground.

There was a brief discussion then the bag was torn away. The diffused light stung Lance’s eyes, and he had trouble regaining his breath. His sight slid and refused to focus; it jumped around, his muddled brain unable to pull in all the details. There was too much green, too much brown, too much, too much, too much. Everything ran away from him.

A hand fisted in the collar of his shirt and yanked him up, but even with their faces so close, it took Lance too long to process what he was looking at.

_ Who  _ he was looking at.

The emotions, really, were what brought Lance back. They gave him something to latch onto, something familiar in the swimming mess of his vision.

Griffin, his lips twisted in a sneer.

Lance pushed him back--or tried to. His arms were bound, cuffed at the wrists by something the rain turned slimy against his skin. A belt, maybe, the leather drenched. 

“What a lucky break! A bonafide Christmas miracle,” James was saying. Holding on to his feelings helped Lance ignore his confusion, chased off the exhaustion clinging to his bones. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“Funny,” Lance spat. He rode Griffin’s anger, used it as his own. “Usually you don't beat the shit out of people and tie them up for that.”

Griffin dropped him.

He hit the ground again, his shoulder snapping up, colliding with his ear. Lance barely felt it. He shoved it away to deal with later, and spit at Griffin’s shoes, swept out his legs attempting the land a blow. That was a mistake. Lance hadn’t seen Kinkade there, lurking just behind Griffin, and the sudden impact of his boot against his chest dimmed the sky at the edges.

Bile surged up his throat.

“Keep quiet, and it’ll go smoother,” Kinkade warned, his voice too smooth, too calm. And he  _ was _ calm, like this was nothing, as commonplace as running into a Quik-E mart for a pack of gum.

Maybe for them it was.

Lance grit his teeth and said nothing.  
Griffin crouched. His eyes were wild--full of delight, victory. “Now that you understand, and I have your attention--” Lance bit back a scoff. “--we have so much to talk about.”

He waited, watched him expectantly, but Lance didn’t say anything, just watched him back with a glower, wishing with everything that he could combust into flames like Nadia. A thousand things raced through his head. What could Griffin possibly want to talk about, like this, with Lance bound and beaten and--

Keith's face popped into his head, his arms tense for a fight, eyes all the shades of violet known to man. His knuckles slamming into Griffin's jaw, cutting off the word before it could hit the air. The ill hatred that filled Griffin to the brim.

And, with a shock, Lance thought of Adam, beaten to death, and Pidge's scared whisper rolling across the library table.  _ It looked like a hate crime _ .

Clapping his hands, Griffin grinned. A tiny, gold cross winked from a chain around his neck. Ironic. The only evidence of God with them now. “And you said we’d have more trouble.”

It was meant for Kinkade, who shrugged and kept his eyes down, watching Lance though Lance didn’t (and couldn’t) budge under his boot. “Get it over with before someone catches us out here, James.”

Out here?

Lance took the second they spoke to one another to finally take in his surroundings, trying and failing to steady his racing heart.

They hadn’t gone far, just across the bridge where they’d pulled off in a tiny copse of evergreens that shielded them from the road. Which meant when he blacked out earlier, it’d only been for a minute, if that. Good. Lance was sure he heard Pidge talk about it once, how Hollywood liked to exaggerate the time between the hero’s punch against the villain’s temple to when the guy finally woke back up.  _ If that was real life _ , Pidge complained,  _ he’d have brain damage and wouldn’t be trying so hard to get revenge _ .

Wait.

Lance’s heart lurched up. From fear. From someone else’s determination.

Griffin snapped his fingers in front of Lance’s nose, and he smiled when Lance jerked back in surprise.

The river roared at his back.

Lance’s breath hitched.

_ The river _ .

Which meant--

_ Oh no. _

“You’ve caused me a lot of goddamn trouble, you don’t even know.” Laughter tickled around his words, though nothing about this situation was funny, and he didn’t have a single note of humor ringing inside him. “So, tell me how you did it, because no one fucking believes me. They think I can’t take a loss. That I'm spinning bullshit. But that isn’t it, is it? You  _ did _ something that day. Didn’t you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Lance’s ears were ringing. He barely heard Griffin speak. “What,” he asked dumbly, because what he was saying didn’t make sense.

It was the wrong thing to say.

The false, good-natured display fell off Griffin’s face immediately, replaced with something cold and cruel. He took Lance by the collar again, and shook him, sending sparks of agony through Lance’s head.

“You  _ know _ what I’m talking about, you dumbfuck! What you did to my arm! Do you think I’m stupid? Did you want everyone to think I was fucking crazy?  _ What the fuck did you do? _ ” Griffin struck him across the face; Lance jerked back away from him as much as he could, skin burning. “I saw what you did to the locker! I went back before I left. I  _ saw _ it.”

The locker.  _ The locker _ . Lance’s mind raced, trying to remember, trying not to panic, trying to piece everything together. The locker. Pidge, slammed back against them, Griffin holding him up. Veronica, in his bedroom. Rachel confessing the bad dream. The river. Adam walking through the Holt's kitchen with sharp, white shoes. A broken voice apologizing on Pidge’s tiny recorder. Lance’s own anger, boiling hot, the pain-- _ Pidge’s pain _ \--coiled in his arm like a snake ready to strike.

The punch that missed. His knuckles striking against metal.

What did he do?  
Griffin laughed, once, humorless. “There it is! So you _do_ know what I’m talking about!”

Lance grit his teeth. “I don’t! I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying!”

“I  _ saw _ it," Griffin snapped again. "Ryan saw it."

Kinkade grunted, but offered little else.

Lance stared at Griffin, his breathing harsh even to his own ears. "Saw  _ what _ ?"

"The door fell off," Griffin seethed. "Rusted all the way through. Like it'd been like that for years."

Shock stilled Lance’s heart.

That wasn't possible. Was it? He had a sister who saw the future, a niece that had fire in her blood, but this. . .this didn't make any sense. He couldn't have done that. Lance was an  _ Empath _ , he read and felt others emotions, he--

\--had always been inclined to tear them out of people, too. And where did they go? Pidge's pain, Keith's misery? Lance didn't carry them inside him. He took them. . .

. . .and then he threw them out.

The night he learned Keith's secret, the storm and the night hid everything from sight. If something had happened then, the shadows concealed it. Lance remembered the moment he stood, crushed under the weight of Keith's anger, and when he lashed out, driving his fist against a tree trunk. His knuckles ached for days. And the tree? Lance wouldn't know if it crumbled and fell. They never walked back to that spot by the gully; they avoided it come morning, and hadn't gone back that way since. 

But he'd done the same thing then, injected all of the wrongness out of him into anything that would take it.

_ What the hell am I _ , he thought deliriously, as Griffin's disgust poured into him, becoming his own, twisting knots into his stomach. 

"That isn't possible," Lance told him, reeling. "No one can do that. That's. . .that's--"

_ Not possible _ .

Griffin curled his fingers. Another strike waiting to land on Lance's bruised face. "I saw it," he said again, like that alone was all the proof he needed. It wasn't, or they wouldn't be here, attempting to rip the truth out of Lance's throat. "We  _ saw  _ it, just tell us  _ how _ !"

How.

_ How _ .

Even braced for the punch didn't make it hurt any less. His head cracked against the ground, and Lance saw a constellation of white stars form inside his skull.  _ Think _ , he urged himself, squirming against his bonds.  _ Think of something before they beat you to death _ .

Griffin said something else, voice edged and dangerous, and Lance didn't hear a thing over the rush of blood in his ears.

There was only one thing he could do.

But it was also the worst thing. The wrong thing. The thing that went against every rule.

Outside of himself, Lance felt Kinkade lift his foot, felt the pressure ease from his chest, saw Griffin cock his arm back.

And, in the moment it took for Griffin to lunge, Lance reached out towards both of them, and tore every single emotion from their hearts.

The effect was instantaneous.

Griffin froze, his eyes gone wide and dull. Kinkade fell back a step, the drive to do anything ripped right from his legs.

It all buzzed and raced and fought beneath Lance's skin, squeezed his heart until it barely thudded in his chest. So much  _ hatred _ and  _ disgust _ and  _ wonder _ and  _ comprehension _ all balled inside him, burning him up, tearing him apart from the inside out.

He didn't think, when did he ever think things through?: His body acted on impulse and he pitched the emotions away, ran them down his arms, pushed all of it into the slick leather belt. If what Griffin said was right, then--

The belt snapped off, decayed at the edges, a burning, rotting stench wafting up from the curling, splitting leather.

Lance sucked in a breath.

He scrambled back, pushed away towards the rushing water. If he could reach it, then he could ride the current, swim to shore, anything. He couldn't stay here. If he did, then Veronica's dream--

Lance never finished the thought. 

In his attempt to escape, he hadn't paid attention to Griffin's rising fear, Kinkade’s surprise, coloring them up like Christmas lights. Lance might've ripped all the old emotions out, but these were new, glittering things. Things lined with teeth, threaded with malice, ready to bite.

Kinkade grabbed him, pinned him down.

Lance fought. Kicked his legs, belatedly realized he could scream. He racked his nails across Kinkade's face, tearing it to bloody ruin. A punch lobbed at his throat shut him up. Another punch to his head made his arms slacken, lose fight.

Rain soaked his purple shirt black

Griffin looked wild, felt wild, acted with fear. " _ What the fuck are you _ ," he said, again and again, his shaking hands glancing off of Lance's face, boxed his ears, bloodied his nose. " _ What the fuck, what the fuck! _ "

Lance couldn't compute what followed after, the snippets of conversation drifting above his head--Kinkade's pleading, Griffin's too far gone--what he saw, gleaming and wet, clutched in Griffin's trembling fingers.

What he felt when it collided with the side of his head once, twice.

By the third time, the world plummeted into darkness.

This time, it did not hold its breath.

It no longer breathed.

_ ♰♰♰ _

There were stars, and then there were red dwarfs, blue dwarfs, suns by a different name. Some distant hollows of space were dominated by a red sun, or a violet one, and rarer yet, by a star that expanded, shuddered, and exploded with enough devastating force science gave it a brand new name:  _ supernova _ .

That was what it felt like as Keith ran down the street as fast as his feet allowed, the wind rushing in his ears, his lungs working overtime beside his racing heart. 

For a moment, his universe was condensed down into the single thought of  _ find Lance _ ,  _ find Lance _ . 

And then, without warning, his head cracked in two, and he lost his footing, lost his sight, his body crumpling to the sidewalk.

Keith curled his arms around his head, shoulders jutting up through his shirt. He was dimly aware of the water soaking his hair, sticking his shirt to his back like a second, cotton skin, and the screech of car breaks, a door slamming, heels clacking across the street, the scream he bit back.

The rest was agony, agony, agony, his skull cleaved clean in two, every atom set on fire because this wasn't right, this wasn't happening, what was going _ on _ ? Keith pushed himself up, choking back a frustrated sob.

_ Lance _ , his head screamed again.

He heaved himself up on unstable legs just as someone reached forward to steady him. He recoiled, staggered back, and fell against the brick façade of an antique store. So he was already downtown. Relief pooled in his chest.

"Hey, kid, are you alright?" Keith glanced over and saw an unfamiliar pair of warm eyes set in a chubby face, stubble darkening his cheeks, brushy black brows drawn in worry. "Do we need to call 911? Your face. . ."

Keith wiped his knuckles across his cheek. They came back smeared with red. His own pain was nothing; whatever throbbing through his head took all of his concentration.

A woman stood in the street beside an idling car, the doors thrown open. Her yellow dress caught the wind, darkened under the rain. There was something familiar about them, set in their worried eyes and clenched hands.

"You're Hunk's parents," he said as realization dawned on him. The man nodded--Mr. Garrett, Keith corrected himself. Keith glanced inside the car, but Hunk wasn't with them.  _ Dammit _ . "I'm fine. I, uh, just lost my footing."

He was already backing away, the itch, the panic, relentless in his legs.

Mr. Garrett let out a nervous chuckle. "I'll say. You were going so fast! And, hell, I know you. I haven't seen you around in years. You're Texas' boy."

Keith grit his teeth. "Yeah. Listen--" He knew he sounded impatient, on the rough side of rude, but he couldn't stand on the side of the road and chit-chat. "I'm in a hurry, and--"

"You sure you're alright? I can't in good faith let you--"

"I'm fine," he said stiffly, and before Mr. Garrett got the wrong idea, Keith took off again, at a much more normal gait.

Panic clenched his throat, nested deep in his belly.  _ Think _ , he told himself.  _ He's fine. He's  _ fine _ . It's Lance, the worst that's gonna happen is he got in a fight with Rachel and is sulking in his room _ .

But what about the ear-cleaving headache? What the hell was that all about?

It no longer hurt, now that Keith took a late second to assess. He slowed to a stop, fished his phone out of his pocket, he text, no, he called Lance's phone, feeling stupid that it wasn't his first instinct. 

_ He'll answer and tell me I'm being stupid _ . As if Lance did any such thing.

The call went to voicemail.

Keith tried again.

Same thing.

Okay, not good. Decidedly, that was the worst thing that could happen. Hands shaking, Keith tried the house phone.  _ He didn’t plug it in, he forgot it was nearly dead, he doesn’t have service in his room sometimes. _ Excuses, excuses, excuses.

He was running again before the call connected, body acting to rid itself of his tangled nerves.

“Hello?”

“Veronica?” He expected Lance’s mom or dad; hearing Veronica’s voice set him even closer on-edge. “Hey, I--can I talk to Lance?”

There was a pause on the other end.

Rain streaked by him as he darted through the back alleys, the vacant side roads that bracketed the main downtown strip like paths on a well-known secret map. 

“. . .he’s not here,” Veronica said, in the time it took three new galaxies to form. Seconds, really, but to Keith, there had never been a longer pause between a question and an answer. “He went to Pidge’s a while ago.”

The truth tumbled out of him. If something was wrong, if the things Keith felt were true things, then his sister would know. She was made of the same, magical stuff as Lance was.

“I think something’s wrong.” Silence. Keith barreled on, in explanation and through the streets. His heart throbbed painfully. He ignored it like he’d ignored everything else about that day. “I--I had a bad feeling and I tried to get ahold of Lance, and his phone isn’t working. I can’t get through.”

For the third time that day, Keith heard someone drawn in a breath.

This time, though, it recoiled through him, shiver-like, all the way down to his toes.

“The river,” she breathed, and for a moment, Keith wasn’t sure if she said it to him or to herself. The horror cradled in the words sickened him to hear no matter who she said them for. 

And then, sharper, “Go to the river, right now! I had a dream--no, there’s no time, Keith, he’s at the river, he has to be! We’ll be there as fast as we can.”

The line died.

And Keith died right along with it.

_ The river _ . 

He cast a hurried look around him, quietly begging himself to calm down, and realized, at some point during the short call, the buildings transformed into trees and the paved streets melted away into grass and mud. It wasn’t distant traffic he heard, but the river rushing along nearby. 

Somehow, his body knew where to go all along.

The problem now was the river was, well, a  _ river _ . It cut through half the town, bullied roads into bridges, and most residential lots had a view of it, however small, from their front porches or upstairs windows. And Lance was somewhere along it, near it, surely to God not  _ in  _ it. Keith didn’t know where to start--how could he? It was an impossible task to do.

But he’d crawl the river six states and back again for the rest of his life if it meant he had a chance to find him.

So Keith pushed it aside as another thing not to think about: Because, truthfully, there wasn’t any way he’d give up until he found Lance.

It made sense to start where Lance always took him, the gently hilled area flocked with weeping willows and thick with cattails perfect for picnicking. The bank dissolved into pebbles and stones here, partially from the erosion of time, partially as a result of the construction work from the bridge nearby. It was the spot Lance brought Keith to skip stones; the spot where Lance gave him a photo of his family stitched back together; the spot Keith, in a moment of daring, used the cover of dusk and the cloudy water to brush his fingers across Lance’s as they searched for the perfect skipping stones.

If anything happened to him, Keith would tear the entire sky in half with his bare hands.

Lance wasn’t there, or in the surrounding area. It was all the same, if not waterlogged, and Keith rushed by, feet turned towards the bridge. And--

\--there, in the mud, Keith saw signs of kicking feet, tire tracks, nearly swallowed up by the rain. He sucked in a breath--and smelled iron tainting the wind. 

Blood.

_ Lance’s _ .

_ No _ .

Keith flew.

The bridge melted away. The river fell behind. It took a blink, a breath, a moment and Keith was over to the other side, the rain hovering above him, daggers of teardrop-shaped quartz, time oozing by like molasses.

He saw them before they saw Keith.

Two bodies. One truck. All shoved in a small grove almost out-of-sight from the riverside, invisible to anyone traversing across the bridge, especially in the rain. They were etched in hyper detail, backing away, one hauling the other up by his shirt collar and brute strength. An object pitched from their hands. It hit the water in a spray of pink. Rain soaked the ground black-dark, around a still heap of--

Keith rocked back a step, his eyes disbelieving the sight painted in front of him.

Door slammed. Voices screamed.

Keith knew those voices. He  _ knew them _ .

The truck reeved to life. Keith saw the momentum of it barreling towards him, tires slashing through the mud, aiming right for where he stood, shocked still. They made eye contact through the windshield, and the response was the truck sped up with more determination than before.

With a howl, Keith slashed his hands out for anything he could hit. His knuckles bit into metal, glass, pushing a door more inside and out, shattering a window into glittering bits. And  _ still _ they kept going, the truck rumbling, away, over the bridge and gone in a flash of painted blue.

Keith thrummed with the electric drive to go after them, to tear the truck down to bolts and screws, dissemble it until it couldn’t work anymore. And then he’d do the same to Griffin and Kinkade, rip and tear and destroy them.

But Keith let them go, let them run and hide though they didn’t deserve it, and hurried over to Lance where he lay, unmoving, in the mud.

It was worse than it looked, worse than the iron in the air hinted.

Keith clutched his hand over Lance’s ear, pressing it tenderly as he could. Blood seeped through the gaps of his fingers, hot and sticky, dark. The skin over his temple shifted when his fingers brushed it, bits and pieces that shouldn’t be moving. Skull: Detached and splintered.

Fatal.

Keith shook. His insides alive, squirming with distress.

What could he  _ do _ ?

Behind him, the forest continued to thrive. The ferns settled in for winter, the deer plucked their way carefully on their paths, birds hid away from the rain. Spanish moss hung on the perch of tree branches, heavy and wet; mushrooms stretched their roots beneath stones or in the open bellies of trees, wherever they could reach the soft, damp soil. It went on, as it would, for as long as it kept standing. It did not care who sat there, screaming. It did not care who lay there, bleeding and dying.

Keith rocked forward, scared to jostle Lance anymore. He was still on the ground, crumpled, limbs dead weight, head lolled, eyes shut. One ear bleeding. Bruises blooming. Only the gentle, gasping rasps of his struggled breathing kept Keith from tearing through the trees and across the river to find Griffin. He wouldn’t stop himself this time. He’d fucking tear him apart.

“Lance--” Keith smoothed his hand back through his hair, pushing it out of the way. Tender. Soft as down. Lance didn’t make a noise. His throat went tight. “ _ Hey _ , hey come on. I need you to wake up, okay? Lance?  _ Lance _ . I’m serious--wake up. Or--or say something? Can you do that? Just--tell me how stupid my mullet is. I don’t care. I know it’s stupid, you know? I know--”

He knew.

He knew Lance wasn’t waking up from this.

The blood, too dark. The fragments of bone free-floating. Whatever Griffin had done had hit and shattered something very vital, and there was no fixing this, no pretending it was all a bad dream.

Lance was going to die.

Like this, right here, half in the mud and half in Keith’s lap, staining them both with rust the rain washed away as soon as it appeared.

“No, no, no  _ no no _ \--” Keith jerked his head up. He looked, frantically, around him. There were only the trees and the river, the river and the trees. No miracle. No hope. 

Veronica said they’d be here, but they weren’t and there was  _ no time _ .

He had two choices, much like he had two choices before, when he could have killed Griffin and Kinkade or let them run. To be the monster or to not. He had two choices, to let Lance die or to curse him too. Make him a monster, or not.

They were both a type of death.

Lance wasn’t made for that, for dying, for spending his life dressed in nighttime. He loved the stars, sure, but he needed sunlight. The freedom of existing when and where he wanted. Not this. Not what Keith had to live with. 

But it was the only way to keep him.

Keith didn’t want him to die.

He didn’t want to keep being alone.

He didn’t even know if it’d work, if intent had been the only thing keeping Lance safe. But what else could he do? There was no other choice. It was this, or it was nothing at all.

His whispered, “I’m sorry,” caught in his throat. It broke the small reign of control he had over himself, spilt the dam of his eyes. Tears rolled down his cheeks--like the rain, sudden and thick--as he opened his mouth, fangs sliding over his lower lip.

He didn’t know what else to do. Just this. Just this selfish, awful thing.

Keith bent forward, mouth reaching for his throat. And the moment he grazed Lance’s paling skin with his teeth, a set of hands came from behind him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and eased him back.

“No,  _ hijo _ , not that.”

Her hands held the wonder of their family magic, even now, as they shook with tremors of worry. They eased away some of his, took his fear before he acted on it and lashed out at her in blind defense.

She had Lance’s same face, the warm way his mouth always seemed to want to smile. And the same eyes, blue as the sea. His mother and him, as near a matching set as they could be. Keith’s breath hitched in his throat, seeing her there, and Veronica, just behind, her eyes wet behind her glasses. Rachel, too. Marco. Luis. Deigo.

Everyone.

Maria acted now, lowered her hands to Lance’s broken body, nudging away Keith’s hands for her own. She felt the same ruined parts, and the skin around her eyes tensed even more. To Keith, to Veronica, to anyone that heard her, she ordered, “Help me take him to the river.”

Keith mutely did as he was told, blinking through his tears, the rainfall, gritting his teeth to force himself to make his hands stop shaking.

Veronica grabbed Lance’s feet. Keith and Luis held Lance around his torso, balancing most of his weight. And Maria McClain cupped her son’s head between her hands, one red within a second, the other bone dry, her husband on one side of her, Rachel and Marco on the other, all of them linked and anchored to keep the river from pulling them apart.

They took him to the water like she instructed.

They lowered him into the muddy water. 

Not a single one of them let go.

Keith watched silently as Lance slipped under the water, held down by his own mother’s hands, in the same river she gave him for his fifth birthday. The one of crayfish and laughter, of slick stones and stories. The place Lance liked to walk in the evenings and skip stones. His river. His private piece of Indigo Pull.

It swallowed him up, easy as that.

As the rain finally eased and stopped, the clouds shaking apart overhead, the soft, sad tune of a family lullaby drifted up from over the waters. There was no fanfare, no lights, no painted cyan of magic--just singing edged with a mother’s tears, a family tightly knotted together, and a boy standing inside the racing river, never letting go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooof, okay, so in other news, we are about caught up to what I have written to this fic. I'm still working on it, nearly have chapter 29 finished, but I'll be going on a short hiatus trying to finish the fic before posting the rest after chapter 28! I wanted to drop a warning here first. We still have a few chapters to go! And as chapter 24 kinda ties into this one, and is a short piece, I'm going to upload it right after this cause they tie-in.
> 
> It's funny how this story evolved as I've been writing it. At the start, I intended Pidge to be the one who 'went missing' and there was going to be this entire search party situation going on, but then, in the fic, there was a key moment I changed my mind and had it all switch over, if you can tell where that may be.
> 
> As always, thank you for your continuous support and for reading! And for all the comments and kudos y'all leave me!! They honestly mean the world ;o;


	24. Chapter 24

Magic follows a strict set of rules. It does not bend, it does not alter; it is, at its core, not an anomaly but something absolute.

But then, what the McClain's were born with was not magic.

It was something so much more.

Because it  _ grew _ . It  _ changed _ . It adapted to the wills and wants of those who were born with it rushing inside them--and they  _ all _ had it inside them, if only they were keen to look.

Before, Veronica's prophecies were strictly about the world around her. And now they were not. She did not know, would not know until she dreamt of herself later on, bathed in the orange glow of a different time and place, a different Earth altogether, and she told herself the truth.

Before, Maria McClain's healing was not so much healing but a suggestion to become well, a hint dropped in an ear, a seed planted in an aching heart. Now, she did not ask--she demanded. She poured her soul into her hands as the river rushed around her, and she commanded Lance's injuries not only heal, but vanish. Reverse. Revert back to how they were before. She did not know it would work until later, much later, when her hope grew weary inside her heart and her power dwindled to dregs.

Before, Diego watched it all from the outside, giftless but proud of his wife and his daughters, and, more recently, of his son and his niece. Now, he anchored his family against the strong current, his arms looped through Luis and Marco's, Rachel and Veronica's, the boy who won Lance's heart shaking across from him, watching the water swirl with pink and red. He wished that he could do more and be more, offer something other than his strong arms and steady legs. Anything,  _ anything _ to save his boy. He'd seen the blood, the beaten ruin of his face; he knew it was bad, worse than bad, worse than the worst thing he could possibly imagine because it already was the worst thing that could happen. He did not know that his desperation sang through him loud and clear. He did not know that the magic heard him, that it already lived inside him, only waiting on him to call.

Before, the boy in the water was a boy outside of the water. He was fine and then he was dying, all within the span of a few, crucial moments. The river saw the golden light inside the boy flicker to embers, dull and dark. The river watched the others flee, the ones with cruel, blackened hearts and no magic beating inside them, and another appear, split down the middle from a different kind of magic and the force of human agony. The water roared out in fury when he roared; the sky wept when he wept; and the trees lining the shore shuddered as he did at the awful things had happened.

Before, if Indigo Pull didn't have a heart, if it couldn't feel love and longing and the pain of loss, it did now. It did not know what it meant, to be given such a human thing, to watch a family weep over a boy and understand why they cried. But the town was not magic--it was a town. And like the river, the clouds, the mournful wind and trees, it could do nothing but stand by and hold its breath and pray and plead, all these human things that were suddenly, tragically  _ theirs _ thrown out to whatever may hear them.

When it seemed like all their voices would go unheard, the magic finally listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit meta, but I really liked how this little chapter turned out, which is why I broke it off and left it as it's own, small insert.


	25. Chapter 25

Hunk had never ran so fast or so much in his life.

Most of the last twenty minutes involved snatching the car keys out of his dad's hands, calling Pidge,  _ getting _ Pidge, and speeding the partially-stolen SUV the rest of the way to the hospital. As they sped through Indigo Pull, Lisa told them what had happened through Pidge's tinny speaker phone. Hunk prayed Iverson wasn't out patrolling--the speedometer wavered somewhere between a ninety dollar fine and a reckless endangerment charge. At least the rain had stopped, but even so, a storm ragged inside him. Thunder beat in Hunk's chest, tears threatened to rain down his cheeks. The air was electric with bad news. 

Pidge's hands fluttered around him, rubbing the dust off the dashboard into little balls between his fingers. He snapped open the glovebox with the mind to either rearrange or rip apart everything inside. He tore thumb holes in his sleeves. It was when he began plucking at his cuticles, drawing up tiny beads of blood when he tore the skin too far down, that Hunk broke and laid his hand on Pidge's thigh. With a start, Pidge folded his fingers over his, tracing circles around his knuckles as Indigo Pull streaked by like a watercolor.

"You don't think. . ." Pidge started but didn't finish.

"I'm thinking a lot of things, bud. And I'll be honest, most of them aren't good." Lisa had sounded breathless and worried over the phone. She'd said the entire house had left to get Lance. From where, she didn’t know. From what, she had no clue. They heard Nadia crying in the background, the checked tears in Lisa’s voice, and their worry bloomed as wild as the indigo plots surrounding Lion Castle. "But you know if Lance is anything, he's stupid and stubborn. Stubbornly stupid and stupidly stubborn. Whatever it is, it'll be fine. It has to be fine. It’s  _ Lance _ ."

He knew it'd been bad the moment his dad mentioned seeing Keith "running as if the devil were after him."

Lisa wouldn't say what was wrong, only pointed them in the direction of the hospital, the urgency in her voice almost as worrisome as knowing that, whatever happened, the rest of the family had gone to fix it.

"He was just at my house," Pidge was saying. Hunk resurfaced and listened to him, cutting caution in half as he ran a yellow light, blasted through a 4-way stop with a glance and prayer, hazard lights reflecting in the store windows they rushed past. "He'd  _ just _ left. How-- _ why _ is he always getting in trouble?"

Though Pidge's tone leaned towards misery, Hunk answered with a partial-joke, an all truth, his tone no less miserable:

"Because everything loves Lance," he said. "Trouble included."

"You mean most of all," Pidge murmured, voice small.

Hunk swallowed and squeezed his fingers around the steering wheel. He couldn't argue with hard facts.

Relief washed over them the moment they ran into the brightly lit admissions area a handful of minutes later, trailing in wet footprints and their worried hearts.

Most of the chairs were empty. The rest were occupied by McClain's. They really were all there, from Lance's dad to Lance's brothers. Veronica, too, sitting off to the side, her gaze turned out the window. In a tiny alcove housing vending machines, illuminated in the weak red glow off a Coke machine, stood Rachel, her back turned towards them, her arms up in heated conversation.

Lance was missing. As was his mom.

Hunk twisted his fingers. He understood Lance was in bad shape, but his absence in the room was akin to yanking the sun out of the sky midday--noticeable, dark and cold.

Diego caught sight of them and rocked to his feet. His slacks clung to his legs, his shirt similarly soaked all the way through. Glancing around at the rest of the family confessed they were all in similar states of drenched. Some of them had towels or thin hospital blankets draped over their laps; puddles lay under their seats.

"Boys," Diego murmured, the word weary-touched and graveled. It held a weight that that sank straight through Hunk's belly all the way down to his toes.

Rachel lowered her arms. She turned, her expression twisted. In the moment her attention shifted, someone pushed past her, steps heavy against the tile.

Keith.

Of course it was Keith.

He took one look at them with his shining violet eyes, and his entire face crumpled. "I didn't even think to. . ," he trailed off, swallowed. Tried again. "I should have--"

Hunk cut across the lobby floor without saying a word. He saw Keith tense, ready for whatever cruel thing he expected Hunk to want or do. But that wasn’t what fueled him, that wasn’t what Hunk had in mind. 

He reached out, and he drew Keith into his arms. 

Keith stiffened instinctively, shoulders and back tense as a spring, and then--it left, melted away, and Keith sagged against Hunk with an exhaustion that only came from living through too much in such a short time.

What the hell had happened to Lance?

"Don't worry about the should-haves and what-ifs,” Hunk told him, told Pidge who stepped up, told, really, himself. “We're here, aren't we? And Lance, he’s--”

Keith drew away, steeling himself once he left the fold of Hunk’s arms. He stood straight, and this close, Hunk saw the sharp lines of worry carved in the hallows of his cheeks, in the pressure leaping up Keith’s jaw.

Pidge asked the question on his mind, the one they couldn’t figure out the entire drive over. “What happened to him, Keith?"

They could have punched him, and it would have hurt him less.

Keith opened his mouth, closed it, grit his teeth hard enough Hunk heard it. “I. . .I don’t know,” he finally said, only after Rachel stormed by him, her fists shaking at her sides. “I think--”

A nurse walked in, startling whatever Keith was going to say back into his mouth. Her dark hair shone beneath the lights nearly blue, and when she glanced around the room at everyone waiting there, an entire soaking-wet family and a small half-circle of friends, her eyes slid over to Veronica and stuck. “The tests are finished, and they have him set up in a room now--” 

At the words, every single McClain got to their feet. Brothers, sisters, a tired father, all of them ready to go. The nurse blinked, and slowly, she shook her head.

“I can only let three in a room at a time,” she explained with a patience that clarified this wasn’t her first time letting down a group of visitors. “Hospital rules.”

“Acxa.” Veronica said the name--if it was a name. How she said it sounded more like a nickname, or a term of endearment, something private and dear. “Please.”

Acxa hesitated. Her neutral expression shifted, just a bit, just enough to confess to a whole room what the two of them were once, or were now. “If anyone catches you,” Acxa said after a moment, “you leave me out of it. And I’m only doing this because I know you’ll do it anyway, whether I lead you back there myself or not.”

Veronica’s shoulders sagged in visible relief. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thank you, Acxa.”

“You shouldn’t,” she said not unkindly, almost too soft to hear. A badge appeared in her hand, which she held up to scanner beside the door. “They still might kick most of you out.”

“We’ll deal with it if it comes,” Diego told her as the door swung open and Acxa, with another glance around the waiting group, lead them into the brightly lit labyrinth waiting for them beyond.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The room wasn’t built for ten bodies, but ten bodies it held, every elbow, knee, hand, leg, and arm all knocking against each other some how or way. It looked as sterile as any hospital room could--beige paint, tan wood accents lining the walls, a cheaply made dresser hiding underneath a small screen TV hooked up near the ceiling, a cream colored privacy curtain bunched off to the side, white sink, white lights, crisp white blankets pulled over the bed.

Keith’s eyes landed there and refused to move.

Lance’s tan skin stood out against all the white, radiated like summer on top mounds of winter snow. Tubes and wires fell off of him like vines, affixed to him in their private ways--in the crook of his arm, from a clamp secured over one of his fingers. At some point, his ruined, soaked clothes had been removed and replaced with a generic hospital gown, patterned in a mosaic of the worst green color Keith had ever seen. Around his wrist, Keith caught a glimpse of his gifted bracelet, black as the promise it meant between them.

Most importantly, Lance was  _ alive _ . Breathing. His heart rate a steady  _ beep beep beep _ emitting from a monitor beside the bed, though it was hard to hear over the several sighs of relief and worry and the shuffling off too many people squeezed in one place. All of the bruising, the blood, the places Keith’s fingers had brushed over hours before--gone, every last one. Healed, he knew, before Lance ever reached the hospital, because he wouldn’t have reached the hospital if not.

Keith saw Rachel’s back tense, and he reeled in his thoughts, tucked them away, tried to think of nothing.

Which meant he spiraled into thinking about them standing in the river, current sucking at their legs, river weed tangling around their feet. Lance, floating in their hands, the water holding his weight. Why had it been important to take him there? Keith wanted to ask, wanted to understand the magic that’d saved him, but he also wanted to tear through Indigo Pull and destroy everything--walls, cars, people,  _ himself _ . He wanted to smash his hands through every blue truck until he found the right one and make sure it and whoever owned it didn't work properly again. He wanted to step to the bed where Lance’s mother sat, in a chair that matched nothing else in the room for the fact it was stubbornly blue instead of ocher, and he wanted touch Lance’s sleeping face and he wanted to beg for him to wake up. But like all the other wants crowding inside him, Keith couldn’t do a single one.

Rachel heard him, and she glanced back at where he stood in the small alcove by the privacy curtain, sticking to the harsh shadows it cast. Her eyes connected the dots and flicked to the uncovered windows, a brilliant dusk pressing against the glass, every shade of gold a sky could be through the broken storm clouds.

She took a step forward, hand out, coaxing Marco back, but someone else darted in front of her, easily slipping in the gaps people made because they themselves didn’t take up much space.

One, two, the shades snapped down, and Pidge shot him a look that told Keith, told the room, that he’d known about him for a long, long time. Or, at least, had a hunch.

“Right,” Pidge asked softly, and it wove through the bodies until it found Keith, still hiding, still pressed up tight against one wallpapered wall.

Hunk looked back at him as he worried his fingers, twisting and pulling at them until his knuckles popped.  _ His _ look said that he knew nothing about what this was about.

The McClain’s were preoccupied, shuffling around the bed in a protective wall of family. And besides, this was nothing new to them, and the furthest thing from their minds.

There wasn’t any point hiding it anymore. If Pidge already knew and hadn’t done anything about it by now, he wasn’t going to. And Keith was tired, bone-tired, the type of tired that gripped the soul and tugged down, down, down, breaking every resolution he had in half. 

In the end, what did it matter?

Whether Pidge knew or if he didn't, none of that would change why Lance had been beaten and discarded by the river.

Reluctantly, Keith nodded his head down once, slight, hardly moving.

And Pidge answered him with, “No more secrets.” He caught Hunk’s eye and added, “From any of us.”

He said it in the same way Rachel had told him by the vending machines, “This isn’t yours to handle by yourself.  _ Tell  _ us who they are. I see them. In your head. Who did this to him?” 

And like then, he couldn’t answer. He didn’t  _ know _ why things happened like they had. It looked obvious. It looked, if Keith dared to think it, like Adam all over again.

Keith already knew what it was like when the cops got involved. A steady stream of nothing, half-assed attempts, or no leads. Time wasted. People who got away with it.

Keith would make sure they didn’t get away with it this time.

Gritting his teeth down hard enough his jaw throbbed, Keith made a choice. He nodded once again, and sealed his truth away.

A small price to pay for what came after.

They allowed him through as he stepped up, Luis moved back and Veronica turned her body so Keith fit in the circle they formed around the bed. Diego placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezed tight. He smelled like the river--they all did--and like the salt refusing to spill from his eyes. It all, every single thing, the weight of the touch, the soft looks directed his way, Pidge’s act of lowering the blinds, Maria McClain’s steady hands laid over Lance’s. . .all of it lodged inside Keith’s heart like bits of shrapnel.

It was better and worse seeing Lance up close.

Better, because Keith saw each subtle rise and fall of his chest, the ease of sleep smoothing his face. He felt the warmth of him when his fingers dared touching his arm, needing to feel the solid truth of him. Yes, Lance was there. Yes, Lance was alive. Yes, Lance's heart still pumped and his lungs still expanded and his body still worked to keep him that way.

It was worse because Lance had never felt more absent. Lance filled rooms with his smiles and his expanding energy, his milling arms and loud, rebounding laughter. He infected the air with love and happiness and every sweet thing as possible. Whether it was by magic or his own, large spirit, Keith didn’t know or care, only missed it desperately now that it lay dormant, sleeping along with the rest of him.

“What did they say,” asked someone. Keith barely caught the words let alone where they came from. It was a question they all wanted to ask. It didn’t matter who said it first.

Exhaustion lined Maria’s face. Swooping shadows inked beneath her eyes, colored her cheeks, her warm skin gray under the harsh lights. This wasn’t a trick of the light, though. This was another price paid. Life for life. Nothing given without taking something in return.

“They ran a CT scan, x-rays, everything,” she said. The room waited, back to holding its breath. “And everything came back normal. He’s fine. Fine. Sleeping, is all.”

Her sky-colored eyes filled with tears as she relayed this to them, and by the time she was through, she freely cried out of pure relief alone.

Suddenly, Keith’s legs didn’t want to hold him up anymore.

It was too much, this long, awful day packed full of bad things. Everything that could have gone wrong had, and it pressed against him, a startling new force of gravity, and Keith just let it. And then this--this too-good-to-be-true diagnosis. Lance would be okay. He’d wake up after his body cycled through the magic and finished healing, and he’d probably wake up smiling, as Keith often saw him do.

Keith fell to his knees on the hard tile floor, and he welcomed the resulting blast of pain rolling up his thighs. A hand touched his back, a quiet voice said, “Son?” above his head, but Keith ignored it all and buried his face against the mattress, fingers hooking in the starchy, white sheets. They smelled of bleach and other people, not like Lance at all.

Relief crashed over him like a wave.

Lance was fine.

_ Fine _ .

The word felt too heavy, shone far too brightly, like gold, like every gemstone uprooted from the earth and polished.

Too good to be true, but it  _ was _ true, because Maria McClain would not lie about something like this, not to her family, not about Lance.

When Keith first saw the blood rolling down Lance’s neck, felt the soft shift of bone, he wouldn’t allow himself to think past each labored breath heaving in Lance’s chest. He lived in a single moment, breath by breath, skipping stones to the next second, the next, the next. There was no after. There was only then and now and living it.

_ Now _ Keith allowed himself to think of the what-ifs. What if Lance’s family hadn’t shown up in time. What if the river had drowned him instead of saved him. What if the magic hadn’t worked, Lance’s wounds too much for one person to heal alone.

What if Keith had bit him, and what he wanted to happen didn’t.

What if Keith had bit him, and what he wanted to happen  _ did _ .

What if there was no such thing as gifts? As curses? Magic?

What if, what if, what if.

Keith buckled under the weight of it.

Someone knelt beside him. No, two someones. Their hands fell against him, their arms looped tightly around his shoulders, his waist. Salt and thankfulness perfumed the air, intermingled with Pidge’s clean scent and Hunk’s honey-warm one.

They held onto him, and they cried.

Keith, who spent so long learning how to grieve for lost things by himself, didn’t know how to process the goodness life sometimes gifted, especially not with people kneeling on either side of him or filling the room or sleeping in the same bed Keith leaned against.

“He’s okay,” someone said, and Keith heard the rich gratitude in Hunk’s voice, the airy chuckle or sob caught in Pidge’s chest.

“He’s okay,” someone agreed, and Keith heard Maria’s tired voice and the sniffing noses of four siblings trying to be discreet, the gruff cough of a father clearing the lump in his throat.

“He’s okay,” someone repeated, and Keith heard his own voice, shaking and soft, but above that he heard Lance breathing in and out, in and out, his heart playing music through a computer that showed every life-giving beat.

_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The hospital looked different at night. Emptier. Quieter. The halls endless, lacking direction, a maze pulled from a Grecian myth, a place home to a minotaur or a sphinx waiting to spring out and devour the hero with teeth or riddles or clipboards full of graphs and recorded observations.

Marco had never liked hospitals. He didn’t like the duality of them, the way they held life and death in a precise balancing act. How one moment, good news--the baby is fine! The cancer is gone! There was no break, only a fracture! And, suddenly, bad news--we can’t figure out how to lower the fever; the medicine isn’t working;  _ we’re sorry there’s nothing else we can do _ .

When he saw Lance on the bank, his face battered, his arm bent sickly beneath him, all that blood--

Marco didn’t think for a second there’d be any good news following it.

Even standing in the river, he braced himself for that to be it, for the image of Lance’s face beneath the muddy water the last he’d ever see him alive. Thinking back, Marco couldn’t place when he started crying, just that now, as he paced the hallways of the hospital, he felt like he’d never stopped.

He almost lost his little brother today.

He almost had to live in a world where he wouldn’t hear Lance’s bang around in his room at all hours of the night, a world that didn’t rise with his stupid jokes and his bad taste in music and his bright laughter. A world that no longer made room for him to fill. They’d been closer to that reality than this one. Marco, if nothing else, was observant. He saw the fatigue lining his  _ madré’s _ face, heard the shaky way she breathed, saw the way their  _ padré’s _ eyes never left her.

Whatever had happened to Lance wasn’t something easily reversed. Their  _ madré _ paid for it even now, because she refused to let go of Lance’s hand until he woke up.

And he  _ would _ wake up.

Marco paused. He didn’t make the conscious decision to lean against the wall. His body made him do it. One moment, he was standing up fine. The next, he found himself sagged between two twin doorways, fighting for breath, a hand twined in his hair.

Fucking hospitals and their goddamn duality.

“You can say that again,” said a voice behind him.

Through the pressure in his chest, Marco laughed. It sounded wrong, too wet, too rough, but it came from a good place, not a bad one.

“You shouldn’t creep up on people like that,” Marco said, and turned.

“Good thing you’re not people,” Rachel replied. “You’re family.”

“Does that make it better?”

“For us it does.”

Good point.

Her small smile said she agreed.

She slid her arm through his, another thing for him to lean on. “For the record, I can’t stand hospitals either.”

“I know. Not since  _ abuelo _ .”

She nodded, her arm squeezing around his tightly. “Want to get out of here?” Her eyes flicked to his. “I don’t know about you, but I need a cigarette. Or five. Like, all at once. Not chainsmoker style, but full on freight train.”

Marco huffed, another laugh too tired to become anything more than a sigh. “And you think I have cigarettes?”

“I don’t. But you do.”

“So, what, same thing?”

“Almost. Nearly. Sure, why not.”

She pulled on his arm. He followed her. 

At a juncture in the hall, Rachel paused and tilted her head in the way she often did when she was listening to someone far away. In the moment of Rachel’s distracted attention, Marco let himself be grateful she’d heard his distress and found him when she had. He needed this. Welcomed it. Anything to keep from thinking of what might’ve been, of what waited them in the room whenever they made their way back.

After a moment, Rachel tugged him back they way they’d come. A devious smile appeared on her lips, one that meant she either found trouble or would make it herself. For her, there wasn’t usually a line between them.

They found a set of stairs and climbed them until they made it to a single door at the top. It looked locked but, with a great deal of screaming hinges, it begrudgingly opened when Rachel threw her shoulder against it.

The first thing Marco noticed were the stars.

All evidence of the storm before had gone far, far away. The sky was breathlessly clear, indigo from horizon to horizon. Harsh hospital lights washed most of the weaker stars away, but the ones Marco could see looked close enough to reach out and touch. Jewels stitched in velvet. Diamonds on a dress. Whatever damn, pretty thing you could think of, that was it, that was what it looked like. The itch to try and steal a star crawled up his arm. Impossible. But Marco wanted it. Not for himself, but for Lance. 

Lance who loved everything, who loved the wonderful and the wondrous best of all.

Rachel lifted herself up onto an a/c unit, boots knocking softly back against the metal like a drum. “I think he’d like that,” she said. “But where the hell are we going to keep a whole-ass star?”

The second thing Marco noticed was how cold it’d gotten. Like all the humidity and false-summer warmth had ran off with the rain, eloped to some distant city without a word of goodbye. Good. Marco sucked in a greedy lungful of chill air and sat beside Rachel, relishing how the freezing metal bit into his legs.

“We can find a place,” he said. His voice puffed out in little clouds. “We have unused barns all over the property. I’m sure at least one of them can fit a star.”

“Stars are made of fire and alchemy. It’ll burn the barn to the ground in a second.” She held out a hand towards him. 

He didn’t need to ask for what, or try to deny it. She was their secret keeper, had been since the day she heard her first thought, and that would never change. Trust was an easy thing to give her when she’d never broken it, not once.

He dug out a battered pack from an inside pocket in his coat. He knew her like she knew him--maybe not as well, but the knowing counted for something when you grew up as close as they had--and he shook out two and passed them over. He took another for himself, lit it, then gave her the lighter.

Funny thing to talk of burning when smoke wafted around them.

“We can build a metal barn,” Marco said, in an exhale of smoke. “Titanium. Platinum. Whatever the hardest thing to melt is. Problem solved.”

Rachel tucked the other cigarette behind her ear. Whenever the one she smoked nearly went out, she’d use the last drag from the glowing tip to light the other one. And as she did, Marco would replace the one she’d lost, returning it to the same spot for ease of access. On and on, until Rachel remembered humans sometimes needed to breathe fresh air or the knot inside her chest eased up. Whichever came first. 

Full on freight train, as she said.

It was easy to see her mouth lift up when he thought it.

It was easier to know it'd make her smile because this was their way of things.

“Not solved, just diverted,” Rachel said, continuing their verbal conversation instead of lingering too deeply on the one inside their heads. “Stars are hot--”

“I’m sure they appreciate the compliment.”

She swatted his arm. “I  _ mean _ , temperature-wise, like ‘here be molten metal’, but you’re right, some  _ are  _ pretty good-looking. You hear that, Orion! Looking at you, hunter boy!”

_ Now _ his laughter sounded right. Clear. All the sadness burned out of him. “Cut it out, Rach, someone might hear us!”

Rachel grinned. “Betcha I’ll hear them first.”

Marco rolled his eyes, hiding his smile behind his cupped hand, taking another lingering drag. “I don’t doubt that. But where are we gonna run? Hide? We’re on the roof.”

“I’ll think of something.”

He didn’t doubt that either. She was a person full of ideas--some her own, some not. That was her magic, her gift, her power to hold.

Speaking of.

“Why  _ are _ we up here,” he asked. He leaned back on his hands, skin burning from the cold. Wind whipped around him, stirred his hair, and his coat bellowed open as if it felt the need to bundle up beside him. “The roof, I mean. Not, like, metaphysically.”

“I knew what you meant.” 

For a moment, the only sounds were the wind rushing past Marco’s ears and the heavy soles of Rachel’s boots kicking back against the air conditioner:  _ boom boom boom _ . 

And for Rachel? Who knew what it sounded like, hearing the thoughts of everyone around. Noisy, most definitely. Overwhelming, probably. But interesting? There was no doubt.

Rachel slid the spare cigarette from behind her ear and put it in her mouth. She lit it before answering him, which meant Marco tucked another back to replace it. Seamless from practice, from growing up as best friends and siblings both.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. The sky arched above them, maybe not a dress, but a blanket of glittering wishes. “I think. . .hm. It sounds like bullshit.”

Marco answered her unspoken question, “Try me.”

“Well. . .I heard it. I guess.”

“Heard what? Someone thinking about it?”

Rachel stared hard at the stars. Somehow, Marco knew they were staring back with just as much interest.

“No. Not someone.” She glanced around the empty roof, between the pipes and air vents and similar air conditioners dotting the space. Generators hummed nearby. Lights buzzed with electricity and out-of-season moths. From up here, the inner roads of Indigo Pull glowed like a mock galaxy, all the stars orange or blue, blue or orange, all fallen to Earth.

“I think,” Rachel tried again, and this time, her eyes went to Marco’s, holding his matching stare. “I think it was the building that told me where we needed to go.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Never in her life had Veronica felt this tired. 

The weeks after her dream had been bad, full of long, deliberately sleepless nights and sluggish days. She stayed awake until her body couldn’t function anymore, and it forced her to pass out in some of the most uncomfortable places she could find. The kitchen table, the living room couch during the bustle of midday, on the floor in her room, body splayed across the cold, hardwood. The harder it was to stay asleep, the better, the less of a chance she'd slip into dreaming.

Her  _ mamá _ and Lance both sensed her exhaustion--how could they not?--and while they both tried to help her, she either refused it or ignored it. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. Magic, as a rule, didn’t-- _ couldn’t _ \--cancel magic out. They might scrub her body free of the effects of fatigue or sooth away her anxiety, but nothing would steal the possibility she might dream of another future with more of her family hurt.

Or dead.

She thought she had months,  _ years _ , before they found Lance at the river. She didn’t even know it  _ was _ him, just that it might have been, that it  _ felt _ like the arm in the frame of her dreams was his.

And it was. But it also wasn’t.

For the first time, her dream didn’t play out exactly how she dreamt it.

In the dream, it  _ had _ been summer. No question. She clearly remembered mosquitoes, cracked red clay, the banks unforgivingly dense with weeds. 

But, in reality, it happened in a lull between seasons, a hiccup in the weather. The only thing that was right had been the color of the river and the bent arm in a dark sleeve. And Lance, but Veronica refused to think that.

With all the effort she and Rachel and Lance spent to change the future, they’d only changed it cosmetically, without real consequence.

Or maybe. . .maybe the little things they tried were the only reason Lance survived it. Who could say?

Veronica pushed her hands up beneath her glasses, rubbed her eyes with the backs of her knuckles. She wanted to sleep for a thousand years. She wanted to never sleep again.

She heard someone walk up beside her, the taps of her shoes familiar enough she didn’t need to look back to see who it was.

The light touch on her arm confirmed it.

“I looked over the tests myself,” came Acxa’s level voice. “Everything is perfectly normal. If we knew what type of trauma--”

Veronica lowered her arms. “We don’t know. We don’t know what happened.” 

Not even Keith, who arrived there first.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t have more of a clue than they did--Veronica saw through his act as easily as Rachel had. But he wouldn’t answer their questions. He closed himself up, made himself scarce and only answered with the same, “I don’t know. I don’t  _ know _ .” They arrived nearly at the same time, but he’d seen a little more. A truck, a set of people. Rachel told her about it when they meet in the hallways during their seperate rounds around the hospital.

“He saw someone, V,” she’d said. “I think he doesn’t want to tell us because he wants. . .to deal with it himself.”

Deal with it himself.

After seeing the complicated way Rachel tried to mask her expression and failed, Veronica could guess what  _ deal with it _ truly meant.

Deal with it himself, like he’d tried to do with Lance.

The thought of it made her uneasy. Lance, a vampire? She couldn’t imagine it. She certainly never dreamed of that possibility, and she’d told Lance that once, when he asked her about it without asking her.

But if it was between that or not having Lance at all? The choice was an easy one for her to make. For any of them to make.

Maybe that made her selfish.

Maybe that’s why her prophecy changed.

Maybe this was punishment for using her powers to watch over her family instead of unleashing its true potential.

“Veronica? Are you all right?”

Veronica glanced down and realized Acxa hadn’t lowered her hand.

In every future she dreamt, she never saw one between them.

But she grazed her fingers across Acxa’s knuckles anyway, and pretended, for a moment, that it didn’t matter. That she was normal, a dreamer only in the sense that she didn’t dreamt of true things.

“I’m as fine as I can be,” she admitted honestly. And then, she let her hand fall.

She missed it when Acxa’s pulled hers away, not that she let it show on her face, or let the fleeting feeling take root in her heart.

“If there’s anything--”

“I know.” She repeated it, softer. “I know. You’ve already done so much for us. I can’t thank you enough.”

“You don’t need to thank me at all.” Always professional, Veronica thought, even between them.

Together, they stared out the floor-length window, watching as Indigo Pull started to wake up. Dawn breathed around the mountains, blush pink and periwinkle. Cars zipped in and out of the parking lot, lights slashing across the shadows and over where they stood. It felt surreal, witnessing the world rise and start its day as if nothing happened. As if Lance almost wasn’t here to rise along with it.

Veronica didn’t realize she let out a shaky breath until Acxa looked her way.

“Sorry,” she responded automatically, apologizing for more than her own appropriate weariness and sadness.

Acxa studied the side of her face; Veronica felt it like a touch, and ignored it all the same, because it was safer and better for the both of them that way.

At least, that's what Veronica convinced herself.

“Listen, I get off at five. If you’d like to have breakfast. Grab coffee. Just. . .get away for a few."

For a moment, Veronica imagined what it would be like, to live life day-to-day and not worry about the outcome, if all the frivolous actions of living had any real consequence at the end of it, if everything she did or didn't do led to an end she already saw. Like how people usually lived their days. Just for the hell of it, just to ride the wave as long as it carried them, to  _ enjoy _ it no matter where they might end up later.

It sounded like something Lance would say, impassioned, with every ounce of heart he had, as if he really understood what it meant to know the future before the future knew itself.

Then again, her dreams had never been wrong before.

And this time, they had.

She looked at Acxa waiting patiently for her answer, the fluorescent lights highlighting her hair in navy and cobalt. There were times Veronica saw it shine red and wine, lush green and autumn orange, reflecting the lights off neon signs and drowsy street lights they walked under. There were times her fingers brushed the silky locks aside, times when she would think back on it and miss it.

She needed to stop waiting on her future to reveal itself and go on and make one. That's what Lance would tell her. Especially now, when all she had to do was wait and worry, worry and wait. That would be exactly what he'd want her to do, not waste away in some hospital room while he healed and got better and be sad at his own expense.

It was, she realized with a start, what  _ she _ wanted to do.

“You know,” Veronica said as the sky lightened a little more, as Indigo Pull yawned awake, the commotion in the hospital growing little by little. “I think I’d like that.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


At some point during the night, everyone tried to sleep at least once.

Whether it was stretched out over the one uncomfortable couch beneath the windows or in hardback chairs stolen from the lobby or across the cold, tile floor, the McClain’s dozed. Or tried to. No one managed much, if anything at all, and eventually they went for snacks or to walk around the hospital for hours at a time.

Veronica left first.

Then Marco. And a little after, Rachel hopped to her feet and left without a word.

The room finally seemed filled with a reasonable amount of people. Less crowded. Easier to move from the bed to the windows to the bathroom without stepping on three sets of toes.

The monitor beeping sounded louder, almost shrill in the absence of people. And Keith clung to it, every heartbeat gifting the air with noise.

When early evening became early morning, they broke away into groups. Keith hadn’t wanted to leave the bed, allow Lance out of his sight for a second longer than necessary, but Hunk and Pidge both pulled at him until he relented and followed them across the room. At first glance, Keith hadn’t seen the cubby closet inset within the wall, a rather smart-design choice for the small space. There were a couple of high, built-in shelves, a wood rod for hanging clothes, then lots of empty space, for bags and pillows, presumably.

Currently, Keith occupied the space, curled up as tight as he could manage, which wasn’t nearly enough to change discomfort to comfortable. It helped, though, being out of the light. They must have seen him rubbing at his eyes or simply guessed; Hunk sat in the open doorway, blocking sight of the windows and protecting him from most of the overhead lights. Pidge sat against him, shoulder-to-shoulder. If Keith turned his head, he’d see the tufts of his hair.

He didn’t turn his head.

Just listened.

The two were impossibly asleep. How, he couldn’t fathom. Keith buzzed with unused adrenaline and malice. If he wasn’t worried he’d miss Lance waking up or think the hospital staff would keep him from returning to the room, Keith would have ran the perimeter of the building six times counting, and then some.

Lance’s parents and his eldest brother spoke quietly amongst themselves, not wanting to disturb the others. Their voices were low enough it wouldn’t bother Pidge or Hunk, but was clear enough Keith heard every word. It was better they thought they were all sleeping. Keith couldn’t take evading anymore of their questions or the guilt that rose whenever he kept quiet. Rachel already spilled out what she heard in his head, which wasn’t much more than anyone could’ve pieced together from the scene. 

He also knew that they were stuck.

Hard to call in a crime when all evidence of it was washed away by the river.

Hard to want justice for something they risked exposure bringing to light.

Keith already messed up, on multiple counts. Griffin and Kinkade had seen him as easily as he’d seen them. They knew he wasn’t human anymore. He wrecked Griffin’s truck with his bare hands, and Keith was  _ glad _ for it.

He hoped they were terrified about what he might do next.

“Maria.  _ Cariña _ , please, you should rest.” Diego, sounding worn and defeated.

“I’m fine. A little while longer. He might wake soon.”

Keith’s heart swelled. Soon. How soon was soon?

“Does he feel any different,” asked Luis, which Keith was grateful for. He wanted to know the same thing.

A pause. Keith’s skin prickled as he waited for Maria’s answer.

“He feels like he usually does,” she admitted. She sounded exhausted. After everything she’d done today, of course she would be. “Just sleeping.”

She repeated it often enough, ' _ just sleeping _ ', that Keith was suddenly aware it was for her own benefit, not theirs.  _ Just sleeping _ , to remind herself there was only one thing between this and Lance coming back to them: waking up.

Keith squeezed his eyes shut and curled tighter into a ball.

Diego let out a tired laugh, but it was Luis who said, “Good dreams or bad dreams?”

He asked it in an easy way, like this wasn’t the first time he asked the question, nor the first time he asked it about Lance. From what little Keith knew of Luis, he could picture it. Luis helping out when Lance was born, the proud big brother who took delight in feeding the new baby and dressing him up in hand-me-down clothes. The little helper. The protective big brother. One who still loved him just as fiercely no matter how many years passed.

_ Like Shiro _ .

A sweet pressure squeezed Keith’s heart, an alien desire he so rarely felt he almost didn't have a name for it.

He missed home.

“Good dreams,” Maria said, and under her breath, she uttered a line in Spanish Keith didn’t understand. A prayer, if he had to guess by her quiet, thankful tone.

He wondered if his mom had ever prayed over him? Held his hand as he slept and waited for him to wake? Would she be here if the situations were reversed, sitting beside a sterile hospital bed, making sure she was the first thing he’d see when he woke up?

Keith knew the answers were all the same: No.

He’d been too young to remember her leaving. Shiro, not so much. He carried the bitterness Keith didn't have the strength to hold, and he kept it for years. What was it like, in the first weeks after Krolia’s disappearance? Keith, only six at the time, vaguely remembered his Pop's silence, the stiff way he rose in the mornings and the hard way he went to his room at night. When Shiro came over for his every-other-weekend visits, he was the one who made them their meals. Cheesy egg omelets for breakfast, double-stuffed sandwiches for lunch, ornate dinners of prepackaged box meals dressed in additional seasonings and fixings pulled from the fridge. How many times did Keith wander up to the stove with Shiro standing there, grim-faced and glowering at the boiling water like it’d called him bad names? How many times did Shiro’s expression smooth away when he noticed him there, and his strong arms picked him up and sat him on the counter so Keith could watch?

Too many to count.

Too many to remember.

Keith reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

He left it on silent out of principal. And because he could hear whatever little mechanism inside of it that accepted messages and calls chirp without the aid of an alert tone.

Missed calls notifications and unread texts cluttered the screen. 

Most were from Shiro, others from an unknown number. A few from Hunk, from Pidge, both of theirs saying the same thing:  _ Where are you? Something’s happened. Please pick up _ .

Keith deleted them.

The others, he hesitated to read.

There was nothing else he had to do, unless he wanted to think over the day some more.

He'd done enough of that already.

Frowning, he pulled up Shiro’s messages.

They all, in seperate ways, asked for Keith to come back home. His worry clotted every word, filled each text to the point of bursting, and Keith almost couldn’t stomach to read them. Shiro was sorry, so sorry, for how everything went. He had only wanted to explain everything, and he didn’t know how to do it without Krolia there. Same thing as he’d said in the kitchen, but now he was desperate, pleading, scared sick Keith was running off again.

Keith deleted all those messages, too.

The unknown number turned out to be Krolia.

One text clearly read,  _ This is your mother _ .

The rest? Keith didn’t read them.

He deleted them all so he’d never be tempted.

Her last words to him rolled in his head:  _ Because I’m the reason you were turned. _

What the hell did that mean? Was she  _ like _ him, a vampire too? Keith couldn’t discredit it. He didn’t remember how it happened, just that he woke up in Shiro’s apartment to the sound of an argument, pain scorching his shoulder, the agony of his skin bubbling into blisters.

Wait.

Keith reached back and pressed his fingers against his shoulder, fingers dragging across the lines of his hidden scars.

An argument.

Shiro and Adam had been fighting when he woke up. What about? They rarely fought at all, and never at the calibre of shouting at each other.  _ Think _ , Keith urged himself,  _ You were there, you  _ heard _ it. _

He remembered his name in both their voices.

_ What are we going to do with him _ \--Adam, panicked, Shiro shushing him, telling him to calm down, to think about this.

Keith remembered thinking they were fighting over him stealing Shiro’s car and recklessly speeding off into the heart of the city without a word.

But what if that wasn’t it?

Keith sucked in a breath.

What if they weren’t aruging about what he done? What if they were aruging about what he’d  _ become _ ?

Which meant--

“Buddy? Hey--Keith?”

Keith jerked.

Hunk’s hand reached over him and gently pried Keith’s phone out of his hand. The edges were visibly dented, folded with perfect impressions of Keith’s fingers. And the screen? Shattered, a network of cracks barely holding the glass in place. 

“Jesus,” Hunk breathed. He tried to turn the phone on. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. Destroyed, as easy as that.

Pidge glanced back, jostled awake from Hunk moving around, or maybe from whatever it was that woke Hunk in the first place. “Oh,” he said simply.

Suddenly, the closet was  _ too _ small. He needed out. Keith spun around and just as he was about to push Hunk away, Pidge grabbed his face, palms smashing against his ears.

“Stop,” he ordered, “Breathe. Calm down. It’s okay. It’s just a phone. Give me two days, and I can repair it.”

Pidge thought this was about a phone? Keith almost laughed in his face.

His chest heaved unevenly. And breathe?  _ Breathe _ ? How could he  _ breathe _ ? His brother knew about him since the first night. He’d known for years.

“Keith, I don’t want to be that person, but I’m going to be that person, okay?” Hunk, now. When had he pressed his hand against his chest, holding him back? Keith swatted his arm away. Too hard. Hunk winced and rubbed his wrist. “You’re freaking out, man, and your face is doing some funny stuff. Like, fang-y stuff. I don’t know what it’s about, but I don’t think you need an entire hospital running in here and seeing it.”

Lance would understand.

Lance would have sensed it the moment Keith’s entire world began crashing down.

Lance, who was still sleeping. Lance, who was still healing from whatever it was Griffin had done to him.

It was too much.

Keith pushed past them, scrambled over where their bodies fell back. “ _ Move _ ,” he seethed. He couldn’t think. He didn’t  _ want _ to think. He just needed out.

He shot to his feet just as Maria turned and grabbed his arm.

“ _ Mijo _ ,” she warned.

A moment of clarity, warmth, calm. Everything was going to be fine, why was he so worked up--

Keith ripped his arm away from her. "Don't," he said.

The single word meant everything he felt, vivisected, cleanly on display.

_ Don't worry about me, worry about Lance. _

_ Don't touch me and take this away before I can process it. _

_ Don't call me that. I'm not your son. I'm not anyone's son. _

He spun, with every intention to bolt out the door. The need of it rushed up his legs, squeezed his stomach tight. Before, when he wanted to ruin everything, he'd ignored it for Lance's sake, so he could hear with his own ears whether he'd be okay or not. But now? Now that he knew Lance was going to be fine, everything screamed at him to go, just  _ go _ . Keith barely registered what Hunk said about his face.

What did it matter?

He took off.

And made it two steps before two sets of strong arms pulled him back. Hunk. Luis. Keith straining between them.

"Let me go--" Keith shoved them, the attempts weakening with every futile push. He was strong enough to break them like he'd broken his phone. But he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't dare.

"Keith, you have to calm down." Hunk's arms squeezed around his tightly. "Please, whatever it is, you can talk to us. Don't just storm out of here, not like this."

He sagged in their arms. What was the point? He wanted to run, and he couldn't. He wanted to understand what his mother meant, but he couldn't bear the thought of going back home right now and confronting her. Confronting  _ Shiro _ . He wanted all the tangled, awful things inside him to disappear, but Lance couldn't do it, and Keith already knew he'd never ask him to. Had never asked him to before. Lance understood when it was needed and when it was best Keith sorted through his own emotions by himself. It was part of his gift, part of Lance being Lance.

Lance, who was in the same room, and who Keith missed like he was miles and miles away.

Pidge darted to the window, hooking his fingers around the dropdown curtain. Rosy light flooded the room as he slowly drew it back. "Keith," he said, unnecessarily--Keith already knew.

The fight drained out of him.

Slowly, Luis let go. "Are we okay," he asked, eyeing Keith warily. 

Keith didn't answer.

Hunk remained stubborn. "Talk to us," he said again, his voice wobbling past his teeth. His heart beat unsteadily--either afraid of him or for him or both.

"I can't," was all Keith said.

"You can't," Pidge asked. "Or you won't?"

Both.

Neither.

Keith didn't know anymore.

"Let me go, Hunk." It came out normal, so that was a plus, and it was probably the only reason Hunk reluctantly released him.

"You aren't going to run off, are you," he asked him quietly.

"No." Keith jerked his hand towards the window. "There's no point."

What he meant to say was  _ I'm trapped here _ .

What he meant to do was crawl back into the closet and hide.

What happened was Maria and Diego both breathed out all at once, and suddenly, the heart-rate singing through the monitor changed tune. The air in the room lightened, and Keith right along with it.

Hunk dropped his arms, smelling like unshed tears and endless joy. "Oh," he said, and never had a word become pure, molten gold.

Pidge dropped the curtain. The world returned the strong cast of the hospital lights and the deep shadows pooled around the room.

And Keith--

Keith glanced back, disbelieving, hardening his heart against all hope and everything he so desperately wanted, and saw a set of blue eyes--ocean eyes, storm cloud eyes, eyes his favorite shade of blue--looking right at him.

Lance McClain was finally awake.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lance knew he was sleeping even though he didn't dream.

That was the only explanation. If it were Heaven or Hell, they both tragically lacked in all that ambiance he'd heard so much about. Pearly gates? Nada. Hellfire? Nope. Angels, demons, souls of indeterminate nature? Negatives across the board. God? Missing. The Devil? Out on errands.

All there was, was this: a darkness without shore. 

And Lance, floating in the middle of it, aware and not aware, sleeping but awake, reaching out in every direction, in every possible way, for an exit.

At times, he heard voices. Soft, little things of dread and devotion, lamentation and love. Prayers. Once, a song. Another time, heartbreak, clean and true. These were voices he knew as well as his own skin. These were voices that, in this endless space, didn't sound quite like themselves.

At times, he remembered. Griffin crouched above him, Kinkade holding him down. The  _ whoosh _ of something swinging towards him. The firework explosion of pain followed by nothing at all. Just this warm blankness closing in on him. Sleeping, awake, the purgatory between.

He tried. He  _ tried _ . But no matter what he told himself, Lance stay blanketed beneath the lull of sleep, stuck until something came along and pulled him free, like a sword sheathed in an altar of stone, or a time capsule buried and then forgotten.

But then, it finally happened, and when it did it hit him like the first crack of lightning zig-zagging across the sky. 

With a jolt, Lance's first thought was,  _ I'm alive _ .

His second was that his  _ mamá's _ magic pumped within his blood. He felt it--warm and staticky, out of place but familiar--beating in time with his heart.

It stopped when she let go.

He surfaced when her hands fell away from his, immediately awake, blinking at the sharp, white lights beaming overhead.

She was the first thing he saw as he turned his head--the curve of her neck, her wild curls of dark hair hooked around her ears. For a second, he forgot everything else--the dream-dark, the reason his head began to ache faintly at his temples.

_ Oh _ , that was Lance's third thought.

The fourth was,  _ I can't feel them anymore _ .

But he could see them. And he saw Hunk and Pidge light up, saw his  _ papá _ turn his head, hiding the quiet way he cried behind his quaking hands. Luis broke out in the widest grin, like this was his lottery win, the good news he'd been waiting to hear, his snow-on-Christmas-morning. His  _ mamá’s  _ eyes fell to him and filled, and Lance didn't need a lick of magic to know why.

She threw her arms around him, and he braced himself for her healing to pull him back under. It, thankfully, let him stay awake, and Lance curled his arms around her shoulders as he turned his eyes to the only other person in the room.

Keith.

Wide-eyed, beautiful, shaking  _ Keith _ .

Keith, who took a step forward, took a step back, unsure.

Keith, who shook his head and sighed a hiccup of a word that never made it out all the way.

Keith, who turned his back towards him and lifted his hands, pressing them over his face, his shoulders bouncing under his shirt.

If Lance had his Empathy, he would have done a lot more than say, "Hey."

As it were, whatever magical thing inside him was exhausted, put out, non-operational. Broken, maybe. But gone for good? Lance didn't think so. Or, if he was being honest, he wouldn't let himself dwell on the possibility.

This happened once before after all, for the exact same reasons. 

Lance didn't think about that either, in case Rachel was close by, and he buried his face into his  _ mamá's  _ hair, breathing in the scent of her, like watered down spice and a heart full of love. Warm smells. Smells unmistakably of home.

Slowly, she drew away. Her face confessed she was as happy as she was upset. Tears lapped at the coastline of her dark lashes, so much like his own. " _ Moji, _ how are you feeling? Are you hurting? I can help--"

Her hands darted to the side of his head, fingers brushing against his temple.

Lance started. He pulled her hands away and held them. "I'm fine. I feel fine, I promise."

Hunk and Pidge tripped over themselves to reach him. Lacking Keith's hesitation, they crawled onto the bed though it was clear it barely had enough room for him, and Lance found himself buried under their affection and Hunk's noisy tears.

"I was so scared, Lance, you have no idea how worried I've been, like, on a scale of one to ten, it was over a thousand--"

"Why are you  _ always _ getting yourself in trouble? Can’t you relax? For three minutes?  _ Three minutes _ , Lance, that’s easy.  _ Please _ , I don't think I can take anymore of this--"

A chuckle wafted past Lance’s lips. It wasn't funny, no part about this situation was amusing, but their worried rambling was so  _ familiar _ it eased up the tightness wound in Lance's chest, something his  _ mamá _ couldn't touch. This was his, and he wanted to hold on to it like he held on to his friends, so maybe he wouldn't be so stupid going forward.

_ Remember this _ , he thought, as he said, "I know. I'm sorry. I really messed up this time, didn't I?"

Luis was quick to ask, “What happened, Lance? Do you remember?”

What happened. What  _ happened _ .

Lance glanced around the room at all the expectant faces and Keith’s tensing back. 

They didn’t know, which meant that while Lance was floating in that weird dreamspace, Rachel hadn’t been able to dig the truth out of his head. 

The McClain’s followed one simple rule when it came to their lineage:  _ Don’t get caught _ . Lance not only got caught,  _ twice _ , he put his gifts on display. Unknowingly, sure, the first time, and the second was to save his life, or so he kept telling himself.

The memory of Griffin’s sharp fear slashed through his belly. He tasted bile and blood--he'd bitten the inside of his cheek in a weak attempt to hide his distress.  _ Stop _ , he warned, begging his heart to still. What happened beforehand didn't matter. He was here and he was alive and Griffin hadn't taken any of that away despite all his trying.

Luis watched him. Their  _ mamá _ watched him. Pidge and Hunk. Everyone but Keith who wouldn't look his way.

But what should he say?  _ James Griffin abducted me and left me for dead by the river because I accidentally showed him I have special powers. Oh, and because I hurt him with them. I pretty much brought it on myself, I'm sorry to make everyone worry. _

He flooded with shame.

No. He couldn't do that. This was his mess.

Pidge sat up. His bony knees digging into Lance's hip  _ hurt _ , but as Lance's opened his mouth to complain, Pidge cut in, "Is it what it looks like?"

Lance snapped his teeth shut.

Of course that's what they thought. It's what  _ he _ thought when Griffin and Kinkade tossed him down on the bank.  _ A hate crime _ . And he, another Adam. Indigo Pull under siege. 

Slowly, Lance shook his head. "No. I don't. . .I don't remember much."

A lie. A clean, bitter-tasting lie.

He remembered everything. Griffin's hate, when Lance stole it all and used it to rot the belt around his wrists, the way Griffin screamed afterward with fear. Lance's fault. All of it, every ugly part.

Rachel wasn't here to call him out. 

Rachel wasn't hear to speak the truth.

Quietly, his  _ mamá _ whispered, "Lance." It sounded a lot like  _ we know who did it, just not why _ .

Lance dropped his eyes and stared down at his hands. It was his fault. And he'd fix it. He'd think of something to make it right, somehow, someway.

From the corner of his eye, Lance noticed Keith lower his arms. No, not lower. They dropped like dead weight. And then he pivoted and Lance's heart swelled,  _ this was it, he's going to-- _

Keith went for the door.

Out of everything,  _ that's _ what hurt Lance the most. Not what Griffin did, not waking with his family miserable around him and his powers dormant, not the burden of holding this poisonous secret. It was Keith wanting to leave. It was Keith not looking back.

Why?

Why was this what he wanted?

Couldn't he see Lance waited on him, wanted him,  _ needed _ him to come over. The bed was small, three people too much for the narrow mattress, but there was room for Keith. In Lance's world, there was always a place for him, always would be.

Lance's throat squeezed tight, and thank God for Hunk, because he was the one who called Keith out.

"Keith? Where are you going, bud?" His tone was gentle, the words were not. 

Keith's back went rigid. "I--"

Full stop, nothing after it, the solitary word left on a hangman's noose. 

He stood three steps from the door, frozen, neither closer to leaving than to reaching where Lance was.

_ Why _ ?

Lance's lost gifts tore a hollow place inside him, a cavity within his chest. Like his heart was missing, cut out, tossed aside. If he had his gifts, he'd know why Keith wanted to leave more than he wanted to see him. 

_ What happened _ ?

Not during, but after, when Lance plunged into the dream-dark and got stuck. Glancing around the room at all the expectant faces, Lance, for the first time, wondered who found him first.

"Keith." Lance pushed himself up, wincing prematurely. Nothing hurt, not like it should've, the pain in his head little more than a headache at best. Manageable. A thing to forget. "Wait."

Keith clenched his fists. He waited, so there was that.

"Look at me."

This, Keith wouldn't do.

Nor did he have a moment to debate it.

The door flew open, nearly clocking Keith in the face.

A nimble step back spared him, and confessed that he wasn't paying attention to anything outside of this room. If he was, Keith would have heard the rest of Lance's siblings running all the way there.

As Veronica and Marco and Rachel all tumbled into the room on each others heels, Lance's family finally became complete.

They brought in the smells of nighttime and coffee, cigarettes and smoky espresso, tiny glimpses into where they'd been, how they'd spent their time away.

Lance held his arms out towards them automatically.

Veronica reached him first, her arms sliding firmly around his shoulders. Tears rolled down her chin, splattered across her glasses and Lance's hospital gown. "I thought I told you to avoid the river," she hiccuped.

At the time, Lance didn't think the river seemed any more harmful than it usually did. It was winter; Veronica prediction happened in the summer. And since when had Indigo Pull ever wanted to harm him? This was his home. The river was  _ his _ river.

"Yeah, but the river didn't avoid me," he said lightly.

Veronica squeezed him tight. "You idiot."

"I love you, too, V."

He loved all of them. Everyone in the room. If he could broadcast that, maybe everyone would settle down, stop crying, stop worrying.

Keith might turn around and come to him, as everyone else had.

Marco walked up next. He gave Lance's hair an affectionate ruffle. "Hey, kid," he said, as if a decade stretched between them, not a handful of years. "You, uh, you had us worried there for a bit." He withdrew his hand, and dragged the heel of his palm under his eye. Lance's heart squeezed tight. "We. . .you know how when you were little, we'd sit outside and watch the stars?"

It was an odd thing to bring up. Veronica straightened and glanced back at him, her glasses off and clutched in her trembling fingers. "What are you going on about, Marco?"

"No, really. Lance, you remember that, right?"

Of course Lance remembered. It's where his love of the stars had been born, after all. The fields around the farm were perfect for stretching out across at any given hour of the day, but at night most of all. How old was he the first time his siblings pulled him out of bed, and led him by touch and moonlight to a plot of soft clover? Oh, how the sky was  _ alive _ that night. Lance didn't know any better then--he confused the stars for fireflies. Summer wrapped its arms around him as Rachel and Marco fell against the grass, and Veronica lifted Lance up even higher.

_ Do you see all those lights? All those stars? Can you believe each one of them is a sun like our sun is, but just really, really far away? _

Rachel had laughed.  _ They make wishes come true, too! _

Lance filled with wonder. A million suns for a million wishes, a million fireflies hanging stationary overhead.

He never forgot.

He begged for his glow-in-the-dark replica so he could think of it when he went to sleep at night.

The hospital's ceiling was white and bare, shot with popcorn plaster and different kinds of wishes. Lance, rather suddenly, missed the sky. Lance, not so suddenly, missed home.

He answered Marco, distracting himself before he ached for more lost things. "Always."

Marco broke out in a smile. What would it feel like, Lance wondered, happy and wistful, or just full of relief?

"You should see the sky tonight," his brother said. He tucked his hands in his pockets by the fingertips, a habit Lance grew up seeing. "They're close enough to touch. Swear it. One singed my fingertips when I tried."

Lance smiled. This was how Marco covered his grief, not in tears or darting forward to steal an embrace, but in reliving the good times, hiding away in the stories of their childhoods to ignore the present.

"And why did you do that," Lance asked, playing the game. The room waited and listened to this exchange; Pidge and Hunk shared knowing glances, and Veronica wiped her tears. His parents stood and sat beside him, looking down at their hands, their tired smiles small and precious things. Keith's head canted softly to one side, listening in, his hand anchored to the wall.

"I tried to steal one. For you."

A running joke. A task Marco always claimed he almost completed night after night. (" _ Almost had one, Lancey, but I think it was composed of mostly helium because it floated away when I wasn't looking. _ ", " _ See this burn? I hooked another star for you last night, but it must've snuffed out before you woke up. _ ") One day, he claimed, he'd manage it, and one day, Lance will devise a home for a star and feed it all his wishes for breakfast. This was something they decided long ago, on the first night in the fragrant clover, craning their heads back at full tilt to take in as much of the star-strone sky as possible.

"Ask Rach," Marco said, and he thrust his thumb over his shoulder to where she stood.

Now, Lance got a good look at her, and he noticed she was frozen in place like Keith was frozen in place. But backwards. Keith wanted to leave, and Rachel looked like she didn't want to come any closer.

Lance sat forward, Pidge and Hunk moving out of the way as if they expected him to jump up to his feet.

Rachel shook her head.

Her eyes were storms and crashing waves, wide and lined beneath from sleepless nights.

Something wasn't right.

The way she looked at him made Lance feel uneasy, sucked all the sweetness from Marco's reminiscing and the mention of stars.

“Lance,” she breathed, and the room quieted around the next thing she said, “I can’t hear you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the outpouring from the last chapter!! I know that one was Intense, but lemme tell you, the Reckoning is Coming!
> 
> If you didn't see it, my friend wrote a companion fic for this!! It's on the lighter, softer side, and I love it with my entire heart, okay!! Go check it out at BobtheAcorn, if you wanna read them being soft boys in love, okay. I can tell you with 100% honesty that I've read it, like, three times straight through and go to it to reread my favorite parts all the time. SOB
> 
> I hope everyone is doing well out there! Please, keep safe in this mess of a time right now! <3 <3 <3


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a heads-up, we crank up the violence in this one.

The air smells different when it's about to snow. Crisp, scrubbed clean, something poets describe as _ pure _ or _icy_, _ glacial_. 

The occupants of Indigo Pull describe it as _ annoying. _

Once the heavy rains cleared out, true winter waltzed in on nimble, white shoes. Frost crusted over the town, pretty as crystals in the twilight. It coated barns roofs and crowned the tree branches closest to Lance's bedroom window. If he reached, rocked up on his tiptoes for extra height, his fingertips grazed across all the glitz and glitter shot through the hanging moss, melting it beneath the warmth of his touch.

It hadn't been any easier since coming home. 

Sure, on the outside, it all looked fine, picture perfect. There were happy meals of Lance's favorite foods and hugs passed all around. Nadia stayed glued to his side for most of the day, a little, fire-touched shadow that took to holding his cold fingers and warming them up between her palms. _ Abuela _ placed her hands and a prayer over his head at least twice a night, both smelling like the herbaceous anointing oil she dressed her candles with. Luis tried too hard to make Lance 'comfortable', whatever that meant. Lance didn't have the heart to tell him to lay off and tentatively took the offerings of food runs and begrudgingly accepted when Luis said he and Marco would cover his chores until he felt ‘up to it’ again.

What he really wanted was a bit of normalcy.

He wanted his family to leave him alone, for them to stop asking questions, keep the past as the past and quit prying their fingers in things he didn't want to think about. He understood it came from a good place, that they were worried and scared for him, that what happened could've easily ended much worse.

If his _ mamá _ wasn't a healer, Lance wouldn't have made it back from the riverside.

On the other hand, if Lance hadn't been born an Empath, there would've never been a scenario at the river to begin with. He wouldn't have powers _ to _ flaunt, no reason anyone would get scared enough to beat it out of him.

Rachel in particular wouldn't let it go. 

She helped him to his room that first night and sat on the edge of his bed as he laid there, pretending his head didn't hurt as much as it did. Silence pulled long between them, Rachel debating, Lance trying not to think about how Keith vanished from the hospital room and hadn't returned.

"I know who it was," she eventually told him.

But Lance wouldn't say more than he already had. He told her, over and over again, "I'll take care of it." Or, "I don't remember much. Everything is hazy."

Rachel actually stormed out the last time; he hadn't seen her since, and that was over a day ago.

Honestly? Lance was glad she couldn't read his mind anymore.

He missed his own gifts, more and more by the hour. Without his Empathy, he felt isolated, detached. Not _ normal _ necessarily, because his normal now involved knowing if people were mad at him or hiding their sadness behind their smiles. If they meant it when they said 'I love you' or knowing immediately when they lied.

Now, he could only guess.

Right now, as he leaned halfway out of his bedroom window, the winter air cool around his shoulders, this, also, was a guess.

Or hopeful thinking.

Or, as he glanced up at the clear night sky, a wish.

Lance scanned the darkness for a familiar shape, a lurching shadow, and listened intently for a familiar set of boots crunching through the frost, up the gravel drive. Lance gripped the windowsill and _ reached _ out, searching for anything, a sign, a tangle, a sweet chord of emotion he'd know anywhere.

It began faintly, the sharp bolt of pain at his temple. Lance ignored it, pushed further, digging around in his own head for the thing that made his Empathy work. The _ something other _, the magic. He strained. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the rapid drum of his heartbeat. He clutched his hands around the windowsill, fingers cold and aching, the metal parts digging into his palms.

Something dripped against the back of his hand, one warm drop, two, then three.

Before he could glance down to see what it was, a merciless rush of vertigo stuck him. The room swung out from under his feet; the overhead light danced and pulsed. And his head, _ God _, his head--

White lights dotted his vision. Tears flooded his eyes. And Lance dropped, his knees smacking against the floor. He barely managed to push himself back from the window before he toppled helplessly out of it.

Curled on the floor, teeth grit against the pain, Lance saw what had fallen against his hand.

Blood, streaking down his skin.

Lance rubbed his nose across his arm, his entire body shaking. It came back bloody.

"_Fuck_." 

It seemed a very final thing, the headaches, the bloody nose. Things that pointed to the same, despairing thought:

His Empathy was gone for good.

Lance dropped his hand. His head continued to throb, each pound of his racing heart squeezing his skull. Shutting his eyes against the lights didn't help, and the dizziness built up until Lance felt like he was on one of those teacup rides at the annual carnival, all momentum and flashing lights and questionable safety.

His throat closed up. This was what he had to look forward to, huh?

He ground his teeth and laid there, wiping at the stream of blood leaking out of one of his nostrils. What he needed was a tissue, a napkin, a psychic doctor, but Lance couldn't be bothered with sitting up and finding at least two of the three.

His room was quiet, and for that, he was suddenly grateful. Music would only worsen the headache. And if anyone saw him heaped pitifully on the floor, he'd--

"Lance?"

Lance shot up in surprise.

Which was a mistake.

The motion pitched the room and Lance right along with it. He braced his hand against the floor, smearing blood, wincing.

He glanced at his bedroom door first--closed, locked, as he'd left it. Then to the window--open, filled with a sight for sore eyes, not as he'd left it.

Even with wind-burnt cheeks and eyes wide with worry, Keith Kogane was still the most beautiful thing Lance had ever seen. 

Oh. Was it possible to lose that much blood through a nose? Maybe he popped a vein in his brain and he was slowly bleeding out from that, because the thought of Keith in his window made him giddy, giddy, giddy enough he laughed in sheer delight.

"_ Finally _," he said. His words tasted like copper pennies. "Long time no see."

Keith leapt down from the window in one, smooth motion, and was beside him as sudden as night falling across Indigo Pull. That is to say, within the span of a blink, a breath, a yearning heartbeat. Up close, it was easy to see the tremors crawling up Keith's arm as he reached towards his face, the exact moment his eyes split into their multi-violets, when his teeth started transforming.

Lance watched it all, transfixed. He waited. For what? For a touch. For the woodsy scent of him to draw closer. For Keith to kiss to bloody mouth. For--

Keith sat back abruptly, pinching his hands tightly under his arms. "Your nose is bleeding," he deadpanned.

Annoyance blasted through him. "Yeah, and the capital of Utah is Salt Lake City, what about it," Lance snapped. God, had his own emotions always been this bitter? He couldn't remember. It'd been a long time since they'd been inside him alone.

Keith bit his own teeth, the vein in his neck spasming. ". . .it's not what I expected to see," he admitted with some care.

"And what _ did _ you expect," Lance asked. He wiped his nose again. Flakes of dried blood dusted his arm. He didn't know if that was better or worse.

Keith shrugged. It was then Lance noticed what he was wearing, his torn, thrifted shirt and black joggers. Gentle stains of long-wear colored the fabric all the hues of the forest floor--green and brown and grey--like Keith hadn’t changed in days. 

Like Keith hadn’t gone home since the hospital, like he'd holed up in that old hunting shed again.

Lance's biting agitation fizzled out as easily as it'd come. "Oh." He shifted closer, fingers fluttering along the edge of one of Keith's sleeves. It's all he managed before Keith jerked out of reach.

"Don't," Keith warned, voice tight.

The blood on his hands. Right. _ Stupid _, Lance chanted at himself, rising up slowly on his shaky legs. His chest felt tight. "Sorry," he said aloud. "I'll take care of it."

A low noise slipped past Keith's teeth, and, after slamming his hands nosily against the floor, he shot up to his feet. "No. Hold on. Wait."

Lance blinked at him, waited. That's all he'd been doing, waiting and waiting and waiting.

"I'll help. Just. Sit down. Please." Keith pointed to the bed with an impatient flap of his fingers. He wouldn't look at him. _ The blood, stupid _ , Lance reminded himself before his feelings got hurt. Again. Before his feelings got hurt _ again _.

That was another thing Lance was getting sick of, all this babying. He knew it came from a good place, really he did, but having an entire family doting on him constantly, acting as if he were a rather delicate piece of heirloom china made Lance feel worse, not better. And now Keith did it, too.

There was no escaping it.

Sulkily, Lance stomped over to his bed and threw himself down on it.

Keith watched him go, brow pinched above his fractured eyes. Worried? Sorry? Starving to death? Pissed off? Lance didn’t know anymore.

They held each others eyes. Keith opened his mouth, then closed it, and turned, promptly heading for the hall. He fumbled with the locked door and, for a dazzling moment, Lance thought he was going to witness Keith snap the doorknob off. But, after a second, he figured it out and flipped the latch, slipping out into the hall without a word.

Lance would’ve preferred it if he’d broken the door off its hinges. Then it’d match how they both felt. Well, at least how Lance felt.

He puffed out a sigh and fell back, digging the heels of his hands against his eyes. This wasn’t like him, all this meanness and spite. He hated it almost as much as he hated everything else these past few days, and it felt just as inescapable. His new ‘normal’. What he had to look forward to for the rest of his days.

His hands dug in a little harder, enough that it hurt.

Lance stayed like that, even when he heard Keith return, his footfalls heavy against the floor, the sound of the door closing a very final sound.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Lance said, because he was now this bitter, ugly thing, “haven’t you?”

Keith stopped walking.

When he didn’t say anything, Lance barreled on, “I tried to call you, you know, after I got home.” Lance dropped his hands; his vision swarmed with pulsing, black clouds. “Where have you been, Keith? Why didn’t you come back? I’ve. . .I’ve been waiting on you. This whole time.”

Slowly, Lance heard Keith walk up to the bed. The mattress dipped to his right, and Lance turned to look up at him. Keith’s eyes were focused away, staring off at a dull patch of his bedroom wall. Out of everything, that hurt the worst, because it meant Lance was right, Keith _ had _ been avoiding him, he’d intentionally stayed away.

As if it wasn't bad enough Keith left the hospital after he woke up, without saying a word.

Lance sat up, his heart a very heavy thing inside him.

Clutched in Keith’s hands was a sopping washrag. Lance snatched it away from him.

They sat there quietly, Lance furiously scrubbing the dried blood off his face and hands, Keith staring listly at the wall. It was the exact opposite of what they both wanted, but they were both hurting and didn’t know how to be the first to reach out and break through their own misery. 

So they sat there and didn’t look at each other and made everything worse.

“I’m sorry,” Keith finally said. His feet hit the floor.

Lance squeezed the washrag tightly, pink-tinted water rolling down his chin. “So, what, you’re going to leave again? Is that it?”

Keith shook his head and stood up. “I’m not helping--”

“You’re not _ talking _ ,” Lance snapped. He didn’t recall making the choice to throw the washrag, only became aware of it when it smacked wetly against the floor. “Talk to _ me _ , Keith. I’m right _ here _.”

Suddenly, Keith turned.

His hands, clenched at his sides, were shaking violently; his face a portrait of agony, twisted and split. “You almost _ died _, Lance.”

The force of it knocked the air out of him.

Lance knew it, too. In some distant way, yes, he knew it. But he was _ here _ now, and for the most part, fine. Healthy. Lacking some parts, but wasn’t that better than the alternative? Wasn’t that enough for his loved ones to be happy?

Because Lance was miserable. He couldn’t stand seeing everyone tiptoe around him and gently help him through his days. He wanted his dad’s rowdy jokes and back pats, his brothers teasing, his sisters to come sit with him and talk to him, not for ulterior motives, but just because they wanted to. He wanted to see his _ mamá _ down in the kitchen, humming her way around a pot of _ ropa vieja_, the air heavy with spice and song. He wanted _ Keith _, plain and simple. It didn’t matter how, Lance wanted him close by, within sight, a familiar thing in the white noise his worrying family made around him.

Instead, he spent three long days locked in his room, staring at his bedroom window like if he willed hard enough, he could slip a message out of the small crack he always left, begging the winter wind to find Keith and lead him home.

What did he expect? For everyone to ignore it too? _ You nearly _ died _ , Lance _.

Lance twisted his fingers. He stared down at his lap, the places where the water fell freckling his pajama bottoms. In a tiny voice, he pointed out, "But I didn't."

He didn't. He _ didn't _.

Everyone clung so hard to the thought of him being dead that it blinded them to the fact he was very much alive, and very much in pain.

Keith drew in a breath. It shuddered, hitched, and it became apparent Lance wasn't the only one holding a hurting heart. 

"I found you," came his whisper, and every emotion Lance couldn't feel weighted the words--misery as deep as the river itself, unshed tears drowning out the word _ found _. "You were--I couldn't--I almost--" 

That’s what did it.

For all his own aching, for all the tight annoyance he harbored, Lance couldn’t stand to see Keith break before his very eyes.

Lance reached over and took his hands. They were clenched tight, knuckles white and cold. It took several long seconds to pry them apart. But when he did, he laced their fingers together and squeezed new warmth into Keith’s fingertips.

“Keith,” Lance said. He spoke softly, gently, wishing for his Empathy and its ability to change the very air around him. If only he could fill the room with love, with understanding, all these precious, honest feelings. If only he could spy into the mess of Keith’s emotions and smooth them. If only, Lance reasoned, he could do the same for himself. “Look at me.”

When Keith looked at him again, he _ looked _, taking in every small detail of Lance's face, settling, at last, on his eyes. His own were still broken apart, shining in the gloom, faintly yellow, faintly violet.

"I'm right here," Lance said. "I'm right _ here _. See?"

It was nothing more than a brush of his fingertips against Keith's cheekbone, a small amount of proof that Lance sat right in front 0f him, alive, fine, and _ there _, and Keith--Keith, with his diamond eyes and despair--leaned into it like he'd been waiting all his life for nothing else.

Something in him unwound, eased, all of it visible on his face. Lance felt a pang of absence. With his Empathy, this moment would be entirely different. He'd feel every emotion relax, those twists and tangles straighten, and he’d know when the new ones came, which ones needed his encouragement to take root and grow.

He couldn't do that now.

But he could do something else, something almost like it.

Lance leaned in and kissed him.

A brush of lips against lips, a shared breath, a moment when the room fell away. Pleasure shivered between them, caught in their hearts and the tentative way they moved their mouths, lips yawning open in invitation. This was something wanted. Something needed.

Something familiar and dear. 

Keith leaned towards him automatically, his body melting against Lance's, his chest pressing against Lance's shoulder. He was cold, from fingers to lips to stomach. Lance's greedy hands touched him there and there and there, slipping up under his shirt, trailing his hands up until they reached out of the collar and cupped around Keith’s face. Once he started, Lance couldn’t stop. He wanted Keith against him, wanted to feel the press of his body, his hands, the rough way Keith suddenly kissed him back, all desperation and soft cuts from his fangs.

It was real. He was here. _ Lance _ was here. And they were together, alive and broken, both in their own ways.

Keith's fingers wrapped around Lance's wrists, and for a startling moment, Lance thought he was going to pull away, push Lance back, shift so their bodies were their own again. He didn't. What _ did _ do was turn his face into Lance's palm and shut his eyes, hiding the violet of them away.

Gently, Lance traced the pad of his thumbs along Keith's cheeks. "You okay," he asked. There wasn't any other way to know.

Keith nodded. He shook his head. A twist appeared between his brow; his hands started shaking again. "Sorry. I'm so. . .what am I again?"

Lance waited for the sensations to hit, the music of Keith's feelings to pour into him and fill him with their private music. Nothing came. Nothing but his own wants and needs and emotions. Part of him wanted to try and force his Empathy again. Another part of him, the smarter part, said it'd do no good.

"Tangles and strings," Lance murmured. "You've always been tangles and strings."

Keith opened his eyes. They were as dark as the sky outside, shot through with purple stars.

_ I have a new wish _, Lance thought wildly, desperately, holding on to Keith's face a little tighter.

"That's it," Keith murmured. "Sorry I'm so tangled up right now."

Lance frowned and looked away. Slowly, he slipped his hands out of Keith’s shirt and leaned back. The room shivered along with him, every ounce of winter air spilling in from the open window and sliding across his skin.

Keith blinked, fingers stretching towards him, falling short. “Lance?”

“I can’t. . .” He made a complicated hand gesture. A swoop, a swallow, a zigzag of frustration around his own chest. “I can’t feel you. Or anyone else. Not since. . .well, not since I woke up.”

“What--” Keith sat up a little straighter, his face got a little more serious, losing the dreamy edge from kissing him, which Lance immediately missed, in more ways than one. “What do you mean?”

Two choices: Tell Keith, or lie.

Two choices: Finally come clean about what he remembered from the river, every painful memory of it, and admit it was his own fault. Or, again, lie.

Two choices. Meaning, one answer.

Lance got up, feet itching movement. 

He paced his room as he talked, hands moving, legs moving, mouth moving. “I mean it’s gone,” he said, and there it was, out in the open, the weighty thing he’d kept bottled inside. “I can’t--”

Keith rose. His face looked pained. “What do you mean _ gone _? How is that--”

Oh, no, _ now _ he looked pained, and deeply so.

“It’s happened once before. When I. . .When I tore out your emotions that day in the woods.” He looked back at him, held his eyes, hoping Keith would understand what he was implying. “It took, like, a week to come back. I overused it or maybe it’s some weird rebound effect from messing with things I shouldn’t mess with, I don’t know. But I never. . .” Lance unconsciously wiped his nose. His arm came back bare. “It never hurt to try before.”

With a single, quiet step, Keith reached him. “That’s why your nose was bleeding,” he guessed, and when Lance glanced over at him, the expression he saw on Keith’s face was one he couldn’t read. “Wasn’t it?”

Lance nodded.

Keith folded his arms, hands cupping his elbows, his fingers digging down into his skin. It looked like it hurt. It, probably, was meant to. “Lance, what--”

Lance shook his head. “I messed up,” he said quietly, already guessing the rest of the question. He’d heard it so many times already, all in different voices. “I. . .It’s my fault.” 

“Your fault? _ Your fault _ ?” Keith’s arms snapped down. His face took on a new light, a cast of anger sudden and true. “Nothing about this is _ your _fault, Lance.”

As if he knew. As if he’d seen what happened.

_ I found you _.

Lance turned away.

Something ugly reared its head inside him. It took his heart and smashed it and broke every notion of calm he had. “It _ is _ my fault, Keith. Griffin saw me use my gifts. He _ knows _ . Kinkade knows. And then I did it again and it just, it set Griffin off, I don’t know, I don’t _ know _ , but I _ do _ know that I did it. It was me. It was--”

Keith’s hands fell to Lance’s arms, grabbed, held on too tight, spun Lance around. “That’s what--I thought--”

“I know what you thought. It’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not that. It’s because of _ me _. I ripped out Griffin’s emotions and it terrified him and he--”

“Why the _ hell _ are you defending him?”

Lance jerked back.

“I don’t _ care _ what his reason was! Don’t stand here and say it’s _ your fault _ . He tried to _ kill you _, Lance. You didn’t make him do that. You didn’t make him do anything--” Keith’s mouth folded in a terrible twist, his pupils drawing thin. He was mad, beyond mad, and Lance saw it infect him, one body part at a time. 

“But if I hadn’t--”  
“_No_,” Keith cut over him, pushing whatever weak excuse Lance tried to come up with away. “It’s. Not. On. You.”

But it was.

Deep down, Lance knew it only happened because he set the action into motion. He was the guy at the top of the hill who shoved the first stone that caused the avalanche, the match tossed in the dry underbrush, the forest fire’s beginning. He was the source of all the pain from the last few days, for his family, his friends, for Keith, for _ himself _. If not for his Empathy, if not for his inexperience knowing how to use it, if not for his poor decisions and impulsive actions, James Griffin would not have tried to kill him. He wouldn’t have had a reason to pick up the stone and smash in his head.

Lance _ sensed _it. 

Griffin was a bastard, but he wasn’t a killer.

At least, not until Lance fucked with his head and forced it out of him.

“But it is,” Lance argued. His voice rose the more it seemed Keith ignored what he was saying. “Keith, if I hadn’t--”

“What? If you hadn’t _ what _? Had powers? Been in the wrong place at the wrong time? It doesn’t matter! You're not the one responsible for what he did, Lance!” 

Suddenly, Keith’s hands were on him again, his shaking fingers closing around Lance’s wrists. The movement didn’t register in Lance’s eyes, nor when Lance tried processing how Keith was suddenly there when, before, he was not. He moved between the span of one blink and another, silent, fast, so fast, and, as he squeezed Lance’s wrists, freezing cold.

“They left you for dead, Lance,” Keith told him, voice raw and savage. “Do you know what they did after? They ran. They _ left you there _.” His shaking rattled up Lance’s arms, shot up his shoulders, and punched him in the chest. “Does that sound like you made them do it? I saw them, Lance. I was--I was too late. By the time I got across the river, they’d--I saw you--and they--”

Lance sucked in a breath. “What did you do,” he breathed, scared for his answer, scared for _ him _ . “Keith, what did you _ do _?”

He grit his teeth, the slips of his fangs tracing over his lower lip, cutting his own mouth. “They know. They saw me. I--I couldn’t just let them _ go _ , Lance, not after what they did. I wrecked Griffin’s truck.” His voice lowered, grew into a sharp and deadly thing. “I would’ve done more, I _ want _ to, I want to--”

Lance already knew what he was going to say.

He sucked in a breath, afraid, heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears. “No--_ no, no, no _, Keith, no, you can’t--”

“They almost _ killed _ you!” His anger boiled over. Keith was a fire, a storm, barely contained in this room, this house. If Lance felt this too, he knew he’d burn right along with him. At the end, they’d be nothing but ashes, the room reduced to charcoal and a universe of melted, plastic stars. “I’m so tired of the people I love getting hurt. Do you know what I thought when I saw you? Lance, I thought that was it. That was the last I was ever going to see you, and I came _ too late _. I almost--I tried to turn you, because I didn’t think there was any other way to save you.”

Lance went still.

Keith’s eyes dropped, went tight, his voice flooding with shame. “I didn’t even know if it’d work. I was scared, I didn’t think--” He snapped his mouth shut, teeth clicking together audibly. Blood welled from a cut on his lip, a bright red bead Keith scrubbed away. “You were dying. Right there. Right. . .in my arms, and I couldn’t do. . .do anything except watch you go.” As he blinked, the brightness in Keith’s eyes rolled over, spilled, ran down his face in rapid tears. “I know it’s fucked up, it’s selfish of me to even think it, but I couldn’t--I didn’t--I’m so sorry, I’m sorry I even thought it, but I couldn’t, I _ can’t _\--”

Lance, for the second time, jerked out of his hold.

Keith took it like a blow to the face. 

His entire composure wilted, his shoulders sank, his eyes dropped to the floor, staring at Lance’s feet or the bloody washrag or the way Lance stepped forward instead of back.

The shuddering inhale he took when Lance cupped his face again hooked in every node of Lance’s brain. He’d never forget it, the sound of someone simultaneously breaking apart and coming back together again.

“That’s why. . .at the hospital, that’s why you wouldn’t look at me, isn’t it? That’s why you left.”

Keith laid his hands over Lance’s, holding with all the strength he could muster, like if he didn’t, if he didn’t try to keep him there, Lance would pull away and it’d be over. “I’m sorry, I--”

It all made sense. For three, bitter days, Lance stormed around his room, his head aching, his heart in ribbons, his stomach twisted in knots, because he couldn’t understand why Keith didn’t want to see him. The rest of his family prowled and tiptoed around him, forced cheer and bent over backwards to keep Lance happy. Pidge and Hunk were no better, and eventually, he begged them to go home, said he needed a minute to process through everything by himself. He hadn’t been nice about it. They, on the other hand, left with pinched smiles and promises to check in on him later, faking it for his benefit.

All he wanted was answers.

All he wanted was peace.

All he wanted was this exact moment, but played out differently. He’d waited, and now here it was, dressed in weeping bows and the pressure of Keith’s hands not wanting him to let go.

“Wait, wait, hey--Keith, _ Keith _, look at me.” It took some time, but Keith looked up, and oh, his eyes were beautiful, the glow of them magnified behind his tears. Why did he only ever think they were purple? Now, Lance saw the truth in every blue and pink and deep violet-red. “I wouldn’t have been mad. If that’s what you’re thinking. If that’s what’d happened, it’d have been okay.”

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “It’s selfish--”

“No, it isn’t. Saving someone isn’t a selfish thing,” he breathed. “But killing someone is. Don’t kill them, Keith. Please, _ please _, don’t. I don’t care what they did, they don’t deserve to die.”

Keith’s fingers squeezed his harder. His shaking worsened. “You can’t just _ say _ that, they would’ve let you die there--”

“I know,” he said, for Keith’s benefit and because it was true. “But don’t become them. Don’t do the same things they’d do.” He stepped across the final distance and pressed against him, his forehead falling to Keith’s, their arms bent between their chests, keeping them from being as close as possible. “Promise me you won’t.”

Keith opened his mouth, shut it again, shaking and shaking his head. “I can’t--”

“Promise me,” Lance said again, fiercer this time. “I don’t want to lose you either, Keith. They already know about you. Don’t do something that’ll make them come after you, too.”

This time, it was Keith who pulled away.

He viciously attacked his eyes with his arm, smearing away the last of his tears. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Not after what they did to you. Not after everything--”

“Don’t kill them,” Lance begged. He could see how this would all play out, if Keith gave in and went after them. “Keith, please, they’d don’t deserve--”

He never finished the words.

Keith grabbed Lance’s face and stepped into him, his mouth seeking his. 

The kiss was more pressure and teeth than anything else, and it hit Lance differently than all of their kisses before. This wasn’t meant to reassure, it wasn’t flavored with their midnight laughter or quiet confessions; it wasn’t a kiss for the sheer pleasure of kissing.

This felt like a decision already made.

This felt, in a way, like a goodbye.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, and with an impossible, mind-bending speed, he was gone.

There might’ve been something more said, another apology given as a final offering, but as Lance stood alone in his room, blinking rapidly at the crushing emptiness around him, it might’ve only been the wind whistling through the crack of his always-opened window and his overactive, hopeful imagination finding phantoms where there were none.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Sleep had been a difficult thing to come by over the last few nights. It didn’t come when called, it didn’t sneak back home late at night or early in the morning, and it ignored all messages, the begging and bribing. There were medicines taken, the kind meant for stuffy noses and congested chests with a _ PM _ affixed at the end of the name. Lavender oil rubbed on wrists and throat hollows. Some stolen gulps of whiskey made the world blur and tilt and burn, and the wobbling Jesus painting over the study’s fireplace shook its head at the pitiful heap James Griffin made on the floor.

_ Goddamnit _ , he thought, and he thought it again for good measure and the pleasure of the sound. _ God. Damnit. _

Then he held his breath.

Every good little Christian knew punishments came without warning. Swiftly and divine. James, as the liquor swam through his head, waited on his.

This marked the third night since he sinned, O Father, and he was losing patience and running thin on faith. Whiskey though, he had plenty left, so James took another swig and let the world spin away.

He knew if his father chanced downstairs and found him, drunk and staggering through the study, whiskey bottle dangling from his fingertips, that he wouldn’t have to wait on God for anything.

His feet scuffed the rug as he got to his feet, toes hooking on the ornate twisting lines and patterns, and fell into the desk. Trinkets and crosses shuddered. Something fell over: an unlit taper candle struck the closed cover of a Bible and left a streak of wax.

Three days ago, James stopped sleeping.

Three days ago, James picked up a rock and struck Lance McClain in the head until he stopped moving.

Three days ago, Kinkade hurled him back, screamed at him to _ Stop it, James! _ while blood dripped off his fingers.

Three days isn't a long amount of time by any means, but it’s enough for miracles to take root or for tragedy to bloom. It took Jesus three days to rise from the dead. It took James three days to succumb to his sleeplessness and fear and start drowning things out another way.

It’s all he could think about. The river rushed in his ears every time he shut his eyes. He _ saw _ Lance’s face, what he’d done to it. No amount of scouring his hands under scalding water made them clean. No amount of talking to Kinkade made him feel any better.

Three days ago, James Griffin was not a murderer.

James pushed past the desk.

The whiskey sloshed in its bottle.

His home stopped looking like home when he barreled in, drenched from rain and blood and his own sweat, shivering from head to toe, from skin to soul. Kinkade pulled him up to his room before the maids caught them shedding puddles on the floor.

“You need to snap out of it, James. You need to get it together or that’s it, it’s over.”

Didn’t he see that it already was?

His truck sat in the garage, dented and broken. James still couldn’t think about it. His brain wouldn't process that what happened was real.

They stripped off their clothes and threw them away, stuffed the wads of sodden fabric in the bottom of a garbage bag Kinkade took with him when he left.

“You fucked up,” he told him at the door, and James shook his head, shook his head, shook his head until Kinkade grabbed his face and made him stop. “But he’s not dead. You didn’t kill him.”

“Are you out of your fucking _ mind _ ?” James had shoved him back. Kinkade caught his hands and held. “You saw him, you saw what I fucking did, you saw that, that _ thing _\--”

“It’s. Already. Done.”

James almost punched him.

The last thing Kinkade said was, “I told you the world is a fucked up place. You should’ve believed me and been done with it. Now there’s blood. Shit like this doesn’t like debts, James.”

The garage door screeched open, each inch up a long hour of screaming hinges and gears. All of Indigo Pull surely jerked awake at the sound. Already, calls were rolling in, and Iverson was sprinting to his car, a thousand voices at his back telling him where he needed to go. Soon, flashes of blue light would wash up the Griffin’s long driveway like discolored dawn. 

Standing in the open mouth of the garage, James watched the road.

Waiting inside, the broken windows of his truck watched his back.

When he saw the locker door on to the floor, metal gone to rust, paint flaking off in orange curls, his heart did an odd squirm in his chest. Forget the pain in his arm--that he could explain away. But this? _ This _ ? What the fuck was _ this _?

Kinkade said, _ magic _ , and James said, _ you’re fucking out of it _.

If proof needed pudding, James had a whole bucket load now. Rusted locker doors, phantom pain, and now the scene at the riverside. A moment of absolute--what? Emptiness? Like nothing existed inside of him, every feeling, every thought sucked straight out of his head. Heart? Stomach? Everywhere. His whole body plunged into a state of unnatural calm.

Until the terror surged up and took over, his fingers scraping through the mud, his body moving on autopilot. His mind, checked out, empty, empty, empty.

All because of _ him _.

Hands no more steady from drinking, James traced the dent bowed in one side of his truck. Glass lined a window, transparent teeth that nipped at James’ fingers when he touched that too. He jerked his arm away, expecting blood, but there was nothing, nothing, hadn’t he scrubbed his hands enough?

He sucked in a deep lungful of winter air. Snow was on its way; the promising chill slipped into James’ skin and he stood there, shaking, eyeing the ruin of his truck.

He’d seen--

\--what?

A person.

He’d heard a scream, not his own, not Kinkade’s. Someone else’s. And then--the truck rocked on its wheels, the door blasting in like another car had slammed into its side.

Impossible.

But James stared at it now, and if he looked at it right, yes, finger marks, peeling the side paneling like impressions left in silk. James clawed his own fingers through the impressions as his mind spun.

Kinkade warned him. _ This world is a fucked up place _.

James Griffin’s world was expanding, one grotesque thing at a time.

The wind rushed into the garage, howling low. The sound ran up James’ spine and fell into the pit of his stomach. Midnight glittered just past the halo of light cast overhead, the shadows too deep this time of year for the fluorescent bulbs to do much good. It was like there was a wall where the world suddenly dropped off, a pane of black that even the streetlights down the road couldn’t breach.

Suddenly, a shudder quaked through him. He clutched the neck of the whiskey bottle before he accidentally dropped it, and he pushed away from his truck, leaving all thoughts about how it was destroyed twisted within the clawed paint.

Maybe this was punishment enough. Maybe all his sleepless nights added up to something, paid off a little of that debt Kinkade implied he now carried. He paced around his room for three days, ignoring his mother’s worried questions and his father’s booming demands. _ I’m just sick _ , he’d said. They didn’t know the half of it. They didn’t know that he stood at his bedroom window so he’d see the cop car slid up the driveway long before anyone else. He waited for the news to report something, for one of the maids to whisper about it in the halls. _ Didn’t you hear about the boy who they found by the river? _

But there was nothing.

Nothing.

Kinkade said, _ You didn’t kill him _.

God, it looked like he had.

James reached up and clutched his necklace with shaking fingers, the sharp points of the cross digging in.

He went too far, he agreed with Kinkade about that. And James was _ sorry _ . But even thinking back about the way his body hollowed out, gutted like a pumpkin on Halloween, was something he couldn’t shake. Someone _ did _ that. Somehow, someway, Lance had reached inside him and drained the feelings out. That wasn’t natural. That wasn’t something people could just do.

But it also didn’t mean he deserved to die because of it.

James realized that now, as he crept out of the garage, eyes fixed on the streetlights glowing down the road, blue and orange and purple.

He stopped.

He blinked at the bursts of lights, watched them swim and grow. The whiskey, probably, making him see things. Sleep deprivation making him think the streetlights expanded and winked out and moved.

Moved?

He barely held the thought in his head before something shot out from the shadows and grabbed him.

In a rush of strength, James flew forward, out of the light, out of the mouth of the garage. The world rushed by, wind bit his cheeks, and then--

\--he was rolling down the concrete, hands tearing open against the grit, the bottle gone, smashed to pieces, the burning stink of whiskey clawing up his nose.

“What the--”

Pain exploded through his stomach, cutting off the words. He didn’t see where it came from, his sight eddied and pulled, and there was _ nothing _, sky and stars and streetlights and a set of hands again, pulling him up from the crumbled mess he made on the ground.

Bile flooded his mouth.

His eyes watered from the pain.

But now he saw him there, dressed in dark clothes, everything about him the same as it’d been three days ago, from his violet eyes down to the fury etched on his face.

This was the thing James refused to think about, the piece of information his brain leapt over every time he tried to understand how his truck got wrecked.

Because if people weren’t supposed to drain the emotions out of others, they really weren’t supposed to twist metal with their bare hands, they weren’t supposed to look like _ this _, pupils drawn thin, mouth lined with sharp, wolfish teeth.

And yet, Keith Kogane was all of that, and he jerked James up by the collar of his shirt, holding his entire weight with a single hand.

James tried to say something, anything, but when he opened his mouth, he retched on the noxious taste of whiskey and fear souring his tongue.

Keith slammed him back against the side of the house. Lights exploded; his mind reeled. “Shut up,” he hissed, though James hadn’t said a word. “Shut the fuck up, I don’t want to hear it.”

James threw his hands out.

They connected with his chest, hit strong and true, and for all of his trying, it did nothing. Keith was immovable, as solid as steel and just as cold.

“Fuck! _ Fuck! _ What the _ fuck _ are you!” James kicked. His foot caught Keith in the stomach, _ hard _. It should've been enough to make him bend double, lax his hands, anything--

Keith slammed his fist into his jaw. “I said _ shut up _.”

A new taste filled his mouth--the sharp, warm taste of his own blood. Terror thundered through his veins. What could he do? He grabbed Keith’s arm, digging down his nails, tearing down into Keith’s skin, and nothing. Keith didn’t even blink as blood welled to the surface. If anything, it made his eyes brighten and his teeth sharper and he looked, he looked--

He looked like a monster.

"You're--you're a _ demon _,” James gasped. For the last three days he waited on something to come after him, to make him pay, and now here it was, but not in the same way he imagined.

There was nothing holy about this.

Then again, there was nothing holy about beating a boy to death either.

Keith, if it was still him, still that same guy who once went to school and ran on the same Track team as him and did all those human things, reached for his throat. James stopped breathing. With a twist of his fingers, the chain around his neck snapped clean. It slithered across James’ skin, his pulse pounding loudly in his ears as Keith lifted his hand and showed him what remained.

The cross, its four posts bent inward like a dead spider's legs.

"No," Keith said, and tossed the useless medallion to the ground. For all it's glitter and gold, it’d been useless protecting him. "What I am is much worse."

He struck him again, again, again, the blows landing quick and true, on his jaw, his cheek, the side of his head. The world tilted and slipped away for a second, the pain blotting out into nothing, then James surged back and spit a glob of blood at Keith’s face.

That, out of everything, made him pause.

And in that moment, James broke down. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t mean to, I promise I didn’t mean to go that far.” His breath whistled past his teeth; his nose bled freely, dripped down his chin and throat, surely broken again. “He--he scared us. Me. He fucking did something to me--”

Keith’s fingers gripped him tighter. The fabric tore under his nails. “What?”

Panic froze James in place. “That’s why you’re here--that’s why you’re--”

Keith lips rolled back, and, _ fuck _, James caught sight of all those teeth again and knew how this was going to end if he didn’t tell Keith exactly what he wanted to hear.

“Wait! _ Wait _! I fucked up, I fucked up, I get that now, he didn’t deserve to--”

“No, he didn’t,” Keith spat. He pulled James away from the wall, and for a moment, relief pulsed through him, his head going dizzy with it. And then Keith slammed him back again and everything inside him buckled and clenched. “You’re _ sorry _ ? You think I _ care _ ? You think saying anything will change the fact you nearly _ killed him! _”

James sucked in a breath. “What?”

Keith’s hand cocked back again.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait, he’s--he’s okay?” James never believed Kinkade when he said it--how could he have known? The absence of news hadn’t been enough to believe it either. And James wasn’t stupid enough to go back to the crime scene; everyone knew that’s how people got caught. “I didn’t--McClain, he’s alive?”

The words ground past Keith’s teeth, but they were the best words James had ever heard, “He’s alive.”

Then the punch hit him, knuckles digging in his stomach, pushing a cry past James’ lips. The urge to puke raced up his throat. Stars exploded in his head. When Keith kept talking, James almost didn’t hear what he said, almost didn’t process the slippery words.

“And do you know what he told me? He told me you don’t deserve it.” His free hand grabbed James by the jaw as he leaned in close. “I want you to remember that, that the guy you nearly beat to death said that you don’t deserve to die.” Keith flexed his fingers, and James stopped breathing, the bones in his jaw cracking under the pressure. “Because if it were up to me, I’d snap your neck right now.”

He let go.

James sagged to the ground.

Keith crouched in front of him. "If I hear that you even _ look _ his way again, I won't stop next time. Do you understand me?"

Quickly, James nodded his head. Tears and blood ran down his face. His heart galloped in his ears.

Silence wasn't an appropriate answer.

Keith grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "I _ said _\--"

"I won't! I won't, God, I swear it, I promise, I _ promise _, I promise I won't--"

The pressure of Keith's grip slipped away. Blinking rapidly to clear his sight, thinking that it still wasn't enough, he watched Keith rub his hands clean on his thighs, then turn.

The night closed around him, swallowing him up as quickly as it'd spat him out, and then he was gone and James Griffin was once again unmistakably alone.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Kinkade waited on him to arrive.

He sat on the front steps, flanked on either side by hearty rosemary bushes, bundled in three separate sweaters, a coat, and had a beanie tucked low over his ears. Long, coarse socks--wool, expensive, well-made--peeked above his shoes; the way he sat, straight-backed, fingers laced over the crown of his knee, made their rich, teal color absolutely ridiculous.

"I know you're out there." 

It didn't come as a surprise to Keith. From the moment he stepped foot on the property, he felt Kinkade's eyes follow him. As he crawled from tree to tree, snuck between the shadows--a shadow in his own right--Ryan Kinkade's stare never faltered.

No matter how quiet Keith stepped, how silent he truly was, this wasn't the boisterous McClain farmlands or the Holt's garden-choked yards or Lion Castle’s desolate fields. This small American house--from it's two stories, it’s one-car garage and modest, neatly trimmed lawn--was Kinkade's turf, and Keith wasn't welcome here.

"I know what you are," Kinkade said into the darkness as Keith fell still, looking at the tree trunk Keith crouched behind. "I saw your face that day."

Keith waited, biding his time. Half-drunk and wandering outside, Griffin had been easy. Kinkade sat out in the open, under a porchlight, cool and calm. Being so brazenly on display was his armor. Protection in the assumption others might see.

_ Damnit. _Time for a new plan, a different trick. He turned to go, footsteps a whisper hidden in the wind, when Kinkade called out, "It's your eyes. They reflect the light when you're in between."

Keith paused. He blinked at the phrase _ in between _, momentarily caught off guard, then he shut his eyes. Testing.

An appreciative noise flowed into the wind. "There you go. Invisibility.

"Also," Kinkade continued. "Griffin called and warned me you might be on your way. What did you do to him? He sounded like his mouth was stuffed full of cotton."

Keith bit back a laugh, but the rest tumbled out before he could stop himself, "Hard to fit anything else in with all the bullshit."

Another chuckle, this time it sounded impressed. "Touché."

Well, what was the point in running off now? Keith pushed back from the trees and slinked closer. At his sides, his bruised knuckles ached for something else to hit.

"So you know why I'm here, then," Keith guessed.

"I do. And I won't deny that I deserve whatever it is you intend to do. But, first, I have to ask for you to listen to me.”

Intrigued, Keith waited. Dark humor licked up his throat. What kind of game was Kinkade playing?

"I want to point out," Kinkade told the night, speaking in Keith's general direction, "that I pulled James away before he killed him."

Keith snapped a tree branch in half. The sound went off like a gunshot in the midnight hush. "That's it," Keith voice was acidic--it burned all the way out, burned all the way up from his chest. "You want me to spare you for _ that _ ? You should've thought about it _ before _ you took him across the river."

"I never said a word about sparing me. I said listen to what I have to say. We didn't mean for it to go so far. . ." Kinkade shifted, the first sign he was becoming uncomfortable. "Your _ sòsyè _surprised us."

The word meant nothing to him outside of the musical way it fell into the air. But it sounded important. Like Keith once knew what it meant and forgot it. "My what?"

"I know what you're thinking. Black man knows a thing or two about the occult, has a history twinned in N'orleans, dabbles here and there with things he probably shouldn't. You think his momma was a priestess in the French Quarter, a druid, a medicine woman, something that wears headscarves and smells like chicory and grants wishes for a dollar." He rocked forward, his hands clasped between his knees. The light lit him up from behind like an angel, white wings unfurled. "_ Sòsyè, _ I said. _ Brujo, _if you want it in Spanish. Meaning: a witch."

_ A witch. A _ witch. But Lance wasn't that. He was. . .he was. . .

_ An Empath _ , Keith thought wildly. _ Or he was. Before. _

Kinkade kept talking, and Keith kept waiting, drenched in the shadows from the trees, shaking with each gust of wind that ruffled through the leaves. "I'm telling you I know what Lance is."

Keith cut over him before he could say anymore, "How?" It was all he could ask.

"The problem with people like him or you is that you think your the only ones. His family isn't the only family. You aren't the sole example of your kind."

Keith frowned, but tucked away that knowledge for later. He already had too much to think on, too much he needed to do. And he was growing thin on patience and low on time.

"I'm telling you," Kinkade told the darkness, "he tore something out of me and what happened after was instinct. We didn't plan for it. James wanted answers, to rough him up a little if he didn't talk. Scare him."

"You didn't leave him any choice," Keith snapped, all his interest burning down to cinders. "What he did was on instinct, too. Self-defense." Keith curled his hands up, knuckles throbbing. Hunger clutched his stomach, a deep ache he desperately tried to ignore.

He stepped away from the trees.

"Maybe that's right. Guess from your perspective it is." Kinkade rubbed a hand across his jaw, his stubble scratching against his skin. "For the record, I want to say James isn't all that bad. Deep down, he has what it takes to be a good guy. He just listens to his big, God-fearing daddy too much to make up his own goddamn mind about things. His daddy says jump, and James jumps. He says _ thou shall be damned for this reason or that _, James makes life rough for those who are. See where I'm going with this?"

Indigo Pull paid careful attention. The moon knelt down between the thin branches of the hedgerow trees, while stars leaned in a little closer, spying around lamp posts and through night's silk curtains. The wind shut its mouth, and, for once, it _ listened _ instead of howled.

Keith folded his arms around himself. Usually, the cold didn’t bother him, but with the eyes of the town crawling over him and Kinkade, the chill became unshakeable. Unbearable. A living thing.

"You can't expect me to believe that," Keith spat. "You helped him. You're no fucking better."

"When people call you names your entire life, you want it to stop, don't you?" Kinkade leveled his stare on Keith. He didn't wait for an answer; Keith didn't have one to give. "_ Poor kid _ and _ fag _ don't sound the same as _ black kid _ or _ bastard _ but they mean the same thing to people like them."

Like them. Like golden boy James Griffin and every pristine, white branch of his family tree.

Kinkade rambled on, "People like that Allura girl, who should know better than to flaunt all the money she made off the backs of people like us."

Like us. Kinkade and Allura, their deep skin tones and how Indigo Pull used to treat people like them.

"Do you understand what I'm saying, Keith?"

No and yes. 

Keith understood the most important thing Kinkade hinted at: That past all the layers he wore--the shirts, the visibility, the collected calm--he was afraid. 

Of what Keith planned to do? Sure, and he faced it head on so he might appear like it didn't matter, that he was safe outside of his home and the act of pulling Griffin off of Lance before he made that final blow.

The thing about that was, Keith smelled the sourness under Kinkade's arms, the odor of sweat misting his hairline. He heard his heart race, faster and faster, as they spoke. As he realized that Keith didn't care about what he was saying, only what he'd done in the past.

And what he'd done was not enough.

"Keith." Not a question. A plea. "Think about this."

Keith stepped into the light, baring his needle-sharp teeth. "I have. Every minute over the last three days." His feet hit the driveway; Kinkade rocketed to his feet. "Every time I see Lance's face." Keith cracked knucklebones; Kinkade backed into the front door. "Every time I remember you two left him for dead."

Kinkade held up his hands, like he was trying to tell a rabid dog to heel. "It was an accident, Keith."

Anger boiled his heart alive. Lance wanted mercy--_ Don’t kill them, Keith. Please, _ please _ , don’t. I don’t care what they did, they don’t deserve to die _\--but Keith didn't have any to give. There wasn't room in his heart for forgiveness.

"_ Accidents _ aren't _ planned _. Like this--"

He stepped. 

The world blurred, a shiver of scenery, trees and ruddy brick and Kinkade's wide eyes, and then he stood over him, clutching his arm.

"--isn't an accident." 

A flick of his wrist, and Keith tore Kinkade's arm out of socket.

It sounded similar to the branch he broke earlier, minus the added sound of Kinkade's scream. Keith grabbed his jaw, and slammed him back against the door, muffling his mouth with the palm of his hand. Metal jingled across the walkway, bolts shaken free from the wood. The moon cowered behind the clouds, afraid for him, afraid _ of _ him.

"See?" Keith hissed around his teeth. "Big difference."

A pitiful noise built in Kinkade's throat. His nostrils flared. If he didn't stink of sweat and fear before, he certainly did now.

Kinkade gasped, "_ Lance _\--"

Keith dug his fingers in. "Get his name," he hissed, "out of your goddamn mouth."

Kinkade growled. His pupils were wide and black, swollen from pain. "Go to hell."

Amusement bubbled in Keith's chest, so unexpected Keith nearly gave in and laughed right in Kinkade's face. "Trust me, I've been. Four separate times, and it doesn't get easier."

Keith let go.

Kinkade dropped. He didn't even try to slip behind that pretty composure he had before. Pain does that. Fear does that. It drops our guards down faster than they were built up. 

So does thinking you won the match prematurely.

Keith turned to leave, his back towards Kinkade, when he heard it.

The sound of leaves sighing. The unmistakable scrape of something heavy and metal. A low whistle sang out as it swung.

He spun--too late.

It struck him in the side, the force chasing the air out of his lungs, sent him staggering on his feet. "_ Fuck _\--"

Kinkade swung again, and this time, Keith saw the silver arch the golf club carved as it fell his way, angled for his head.

His hands flew out. 

His fingers grazed over it, caught it mid flight. And he yanked the golf club free from Kinkade's grip, the cold metal folding beneath his fingers, thinner, thinner.

He snapped it in two.

He threw both pieces as far into the trees as he could. They struck somewhere distant, away, away.

Kinkade fell back into the side of the house, holding onto his dislocated shoulder. Sweat beaded across his brow like decorative jewels, glittering under the porch light. His mouth twisted in a sneer.

Keith picked himself up off the grass. Agony shot through his side, hot and fresh, and he stumbled, curling his hands into fists as he righted himself.

Kinkade watched it all, growing paler by the second. His legs shook, his fingers gauged into his sweater sleeve. Keith hoped it hurt like hell and kept hurting like hell.

"I don't care what you do to me," Keith told him, because it was the truth and he wasn't here to lie. "But if you touch him, if you even _ breathe _ wrong in his direction, that's it. I'll bury you."

Then he grabbed Kinkade's face and slammed his head back before Kinkade could react. 

His dark eyes dimmed and he dropped again, out cold. 

Leaving him where he fell, Keith bolted, darting back into the trees. He ran and ran and didn't stop until the manicured lawn and most of Indigo Pull lay far behind him, hidden in the deep shadows of this endless night, the scent of rosemary haunting the air.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


As always, the window waited for him partially cracked open in invitation. It was unnecessary. Open window, closed window, as long as Lance wanted him there, that was all the permission Keith needed to come and go as he pleased. As Lance pleased.

How easy was it now, to climb the air conditioner and leap? His hands knew when to grab the sill, whether he looked or if he didn't. When Lance had his Empathy, he'd already be waiting on the other side, fingers latched under the window, pulling it up out of the way of Keith's head.

Sometimes Lance would just smile and step away.

Other times, his hands lowered to Keith's hair, his face, and it took everything in Keith not to fall as Lance welcome him back with a kiss.

That didn't happen tonight.

Keith didn’t expect it to.

Keith found Lance in bed, cocooned beneath three separate blankets. It smelled _ cold _, inside and out, faintly like water and muted salt, snow on its way. A nearby house pumped the dregs of a dying fire into the air, woodsmoke and charcoal and pine.

Keith settled his feet gently on the floor. 

It’d been only hours since he left, and somehow, the room changed towards him. It felt hostile, angry, lined with barbed wire and blades. Red lights and warning signs. He shouldn’t have come back, not so soon. But the thought of hiding again--staying pent up in the hunting shed, close enough he could sometimes still catch Lance’s scent on the wind--hollowed him out.

He needed him.

He just hoped Lance still needed him, too.

The cracked window was a good sign. Wasn’t it?

Careful now, Keith toed off his boots as he sat on the sill, quiet, so quiet. All the while, he became acutely aware of the bruises coloring his knuckles, their timid aching. Kinkade managed a good swing at his stomach with the golf club, but his body had already healed it past unbearable to slightly less unbearable. If it looked as bad as it felt, his skin would be a motley of deep purples and blues for sure.

Hissing a breath through his teeth, Keith gently shut the window. And when he turned back, a hand cradled against his side, he met the tired shine of Lance's blue eyes in the dark.

Oh.

Not asleep.

Not asleep at all.

Keith dropped his hand. "Lance?"

The blankets slid off his shoulders. They pooled around his waist, a waterfall of marbling patterns. Flowers, blue, patches of a quilt--Lance fisted them in his hands. His arms, Keith could see, were shaking.

"What," he breathed; Keith heard him clearly as if he shouted across the room. "did you do?"

Everything inside him seized. 

"What," Keith whispered back, "I had to."

Lance flung the blankets away, his bare feet slapping the floor. He wore less than Keith expected for it being so cold out and he too stubborn-hearted to close his window. It granted Keith the small pleasure of watching miles of tanned leg and smooth torso storm up his way.

"Shirt. Off." Lance stopped in front of him, arms crossed, eyes simmering. "Now."

Keith snapped out of it. "What? Why?" He asked this as he hooked his thumbs in the collar and began tugging the shirt over his head, mindlessly giving Lance what he--

Lance grabbed the shirt and yanked it up, a heavy breath whistling past his teeth again.

Belatedly, Keith's mind caught up. _ Damnit _ . _ Damnit, damnit, damnit _. "Lance, it isn't--"

A cool touch, a digging touch. Pain squirmed through Keith’s stomach.

Keith grabbed Lance's wrist and pulled his hand away. "_ Lance _."

"Was it worth it?"

He tensed. Lance held his eyes. Tonight, he was a blizzard made flesh, ice and winter bite, dazzingling, yes, but frozen solid. Their argument, every sharp word, lined Lance’s face. It rimmed his blue eyes with red. Dried salt scented his skin.

Keith looked away, looked down, studied the shape of his and Lance's toes. When he spoke, he spoke to their feet. "Yes," he said, and meant it, every, rounded letter. _ Yes _.

Lance pressed the bruise with the flat of his hand. It hurt, but not in the same way seeing Lance's face crumble did.

Keith's shirt fell, and then there came _ absence _. His heart tripped with the outrageous fear that he would he alone by the end of the night if he didn’t act fast. What was he thinking, coming back? What was he thinking, going after Griffin and Kinkade when Lance clearly expressed he didn’t want him to?

Desperation shot Keith's hands out. Love sent them to Lance's face out of any of the places he could touch. It was fear that made him say, “I know you’re mad at me, but _ please _ understand--I couldn’t just let them walk, Lance. Not after all of that."

Under his hands, Keith felt Lance chew his response, and he felt him speak it.

"I’m not mad," he said, answering Keith’s unspoken question.

Keith's heart processed the answer ahead of his brain. He stood there, dumbstruck, a grateful sigh rushing past his lips. 

"But I'm pissed off," Lance finished, swatting away Keith's hands. He tensed up, feet turning but he stayed where he was. It didn't look like he meant to. 

Keith didn't know what to do with his hands now that Lance shoved them aside. The need to _ touch him _ burned his palms raw, hurt worse than any of his bruises.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out, voice cracking. "But they won't bother you anymore. I made sure of it."

The night was one full of panic, in all different shades. Griffin's had been sour yellow, Kinkade's anger-red. And Lance's? Keith couldn't stand to see it, the cool blue of his eyes settling on him, wide and hurt.

“Keith, you didn’t--”

“No. I didn’t go that far,” he promised, this one he was able to keep. “I didn’t, Lance.”

Lance’s mouth wobbled. He crossed his arms over his bare stomach, fingertips clutching the waistband of his sleeping shorts. “I told you--”

“I couldn’t let them get away with it,” he breathed. And he stepped forward, settling his fingertips against his jaw, feeling it quiver. “I’m sorry, I--”

Lance shook his head. He brushed Keith’s hand aside, and _ now _ he left, pacing the room with his arms squeezed around himself. “That’s not even it, that’s not even the worst part.”

Keith’s mind raced. “What,” he asked, desperate to know.

"During this whole thing, no one has asked me what _ I _ need. What _ I _ want. Everyone is scrambling around, giving me this, saying that, oh it's gonna be fine Lance! We'll take care of it! But no one's ever asked _ me _, not once, not my family, and not you." 

Keith followed him around the room with his eyes, his body pinned in place, stomach sinking. Lance was right. He never asked him. He just ran off and did it, even knowing how Lance felt about it, because, deep down, _ he _ needed it most of all. ". . .what do you need," he asked belatedly, dumbly, breathing out the words as quiet as a prayer.

Anything. He’d give him anything he wanted.

Keith thought Lance was going to walk away, back to his bed or out into the hall. _ Away _ away, in more than in terms of distance. Gone from him, in the worst possible way.

What Lance did was this:

He stood there and stared at the wall, making up his mind, changing it, making up his mind, changing it again, making up his mind and finally turning around and walking back to him. 

In the same, breathless instant, he touched Keith's face. Their bodies came together, their mouths slotted in place.

Automatically, the action as second-nature as climbing into Lance's room late at night, Keith slid his hands around Lance's waist and kissed him back. He leaned into him, pressed flush against him, and was stupidly hopeful all over again.

It crushed him when Lance broke away, when he glanced up and saw Lance's eyes squeezed shut and his mouth twisted in an expression of pain.

"Just this." Sighed out, barely words at all. Lance shook his head and pressed the side of his face to Keith's, cheek-to-cheek, leaning into it as much as he could. "All I want is you."

Something wet traced down Keith's cheeks, rolled off his chin, fell to the floor below them. 

Lance stepped away. His hand came back gleaming after he scrubbed it across his eyes. They’d already lived this moment, now reversed, Lance broken and crying instead of Keith.

Keith reached for him, his fingers dragging through air when Lance stepped away.

"All I want is for everyone to stop it. Stop acting like it's something you can fix. _ I _ messed up. _ I _ made a mistake. It's my fault."

It sounded too close to what Kinkade implied. _ Your _ sòsyè _ surprised us _. 

Keith bristled. "Lance, it’s not your fault they--"

"Stop! Just _ stop _ ! Why does everyone want to argue about it? Why does everyone want to put themselves into danger on my account?" Keith tried to say something and Lance slashed a hand out. "No! My mom hasn't left her room in days because of _ me _ . Veronica hasn’t slept in weeks because of _ me _ . You're hurt, you might get killed, because of _ me _ . You all are so scared to see me get hurt again that you don't see--you don't--" Whatever it was he wanted to say refused to come out. It shattered, the words scattered, and Lance's frustration came crawling out, a growl of despair Keith felt filling his own chest. "I can't bear it if something happens to you. I can't _ take _ it."

The wells of Lance's eyes flowed over. Tears ran down his face, dove off his chin, and Lance hid his face behind his hands, every inch of him shaking a little closer to the floor.

Keith grabbed him before he fell.

Keith held him as he sobbed against his chest, the fabric of his shirt soaked through again, from a different, worse kind of rain.

Keith pressed his face into Lance's hair, sorry, so goddamn sorry for making it worse and not better, he only wanted to help, to take care of things so the burden wouldn't fall on Lance's shoulders alone. He didn't tell him he dislocated Kinkade's arm or trashed Griffin's face. He didn't tell him that, even as he did those things, the turmoil inside him didn't ease, just grew bigger and bigger because it didn't feel like he'd done enough.

Nothing he did came close to erasing how he felt seeing Lance dumped by the river. Nothing made him forget the terror pinching his throat tight, the sick roll of Lance's head against his thigh, blood staining his legs as it trickled out of Lance's ear.

_ Trust me, I've been. Four separate times, and it doesn't get any easier _.

Four times.

Four people.

Four stories of loss.

One of a mother who ran away, stayed away, until she came back and told him that despite her best efforts, she abandoned him for no good reason.

One of a brother who, with all good intentions, went off to war and came back with less of himself than he started.

One of a father who, without thinking of consequence, ran into a burning house and never ran back out.

One, most recently, of a boy who loved loudly and was special, so very special, that the world feared him and struck him down.

Four people.

Four stories of earning something new at the end: a mother returned but not the same, a brother missing parts, a gravestone, a boy without gifts.

Keith divided in the middle between them, the common link, the one who lost and lost and lost again right along with them.

Being a vampire wasn't his curse.

_ This _ was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be 100% honest--the chapter in Griffin's POV was one of my favorite to write. I dunno if it was Keith getting to beat the crap out of him or just getting to wiggle around inside his head a bit, it was fun, and something I never thought I'd do whenever I set out writing this fic.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to forewarn everyone that I only have one more chapter to post after this one! This is not the end! I'm just behind on writing it, and it'll be a little bit before I'll be able to have it up. Just to let y'all know! I do have a Klance Royalty AU I worked on and finished at the beginning of the year that'll I'll be posting after next week. If any of you are interested, feel free to check it out!

Snow arrived well into the night, hours before morning and several following after, the day lost beneath a flurry of white. The grounds were soon blanketed, the roads froze over, and every roof the eye could see had an iced gingerbread-house appearance, trying Christmas lights and red and green decor jammed in the snow like gumdrops in frosting. Cows shuddered in their stalls; people shuddered in their rooms. The air turned smoky from clouds and fireplaces going, and each breath brought the crisp smell of ice and the searing scent of woodsmoke. Indigo Pull lost its color, turned bleak and gray and cold.

Lance woke up shivering beneath a mound of blankets, legs drawn up to his chest, hands slipped between his thighs for warmth. Light didn’t touch him through the blanket-burrito he laid within, but he  _ knew _ that it was sometime well after morning. The commotion of the house--running feet, muffled conversation, the far-off murmuring of a radio or a TV--slipped underneath the crack of his bedroom door. If he breathed in deep enough, Lance smelled what someone had made for breakfast, which, going by the slight acrid quality, had been burnt. Which meant Luis had cooked.

Which meant his  _ mamá _ still didn’t have the energy to leave her room.

Lance curled into himself a little tighter. It had nothing to do with the chill.

As he laid there, listening, he tried to pick up on other things. He didn’t force it this time, didn’t push his body in his attempt to try, just opened himself up and waited for the familiar sensations to hit.

Nothing came.

Lance really didn’t expect it to.

He reached up and experimentally brushed his fingers under his nose. They came away dry.

Parts of the night before were missing.

He remembered Keith coming back, their arguing, Lance telling him  _ All I want is you _ , then crying, so much crying, he wept the river brand new. And at some point, he must’ve fallen asleep, drained and empty. How, he didn’t know. At the time, Lance felt so sick over his own upset and worry he thought he’d never sleep again. Or eat. Or do anything except clutch at Keith’s shirt and fear for him and the things he’d begged him not to do.

Lacking any tact, Lance swung out a leg.

He swept it over the entire mattress, from one edge to the other.

There was nothing there.

_ No one _ there.

Figured.

Lance pressed his hands over his face, took a steadying breath, then scored his fingers back through his hair hard enough the touch lingered when he snapped his hands back. He lashed out his feet, dislodging the blankets, kicking them off of him and dumping them all into the floor.

Cool air washed over his skin.

Lance noticed the open window first, the always-present crack in it leaching out all the warm air. No wonder the temperature in his room was that much closer to freezing. The hardwood floor bit his bare feet as Lance stepped over to it, taking it in his hands.

He hesitated.

Nudging the curtain aside, he glanced down at the farm.

Everything glared back at him, white and white and white, snow as far as he could see. It coated everything, the trees, the barns, the part of the front porch visible from his room, capped the sole farm truck from hood to tailgate. The woods lining the property shivered under robes of ice. His eyes trailed down to the air unit right below his window. The snow on it was undisturbed, as was the ground around it.

What did he expect?

Keith ran away with things got hard.

Why would last night have changed that?

Lance snapped the window shut.

His fingers fluttered up towards the lock, brushed across it--and the idea of locking Keith out rioted against everything he had. Even pissed off, Lance couldn’t do that. He  _ wouldn’t _ do that. Never.

Lance struck the glass with his knuckles and let the curtain fall.

Deep down, he knew Keith only went after them to make things right, reset the balance, pay Griffin back for what he’d done. Lance did it himself once, when he found Griffin pinning Pidge against the lockers. He’d taken all of the pain and gave it back. He’d thrown punches. He’d started something Keith went and finished.

Or made worse.

On that snowy, winter morning, it was too early for Lance to tell.

Regardless, it hurt seeing his room empty, just like it hurt knowing Keith made the exact choice Lance begged him not to. He hadn’t said what he’d done, and Lance hadn’t asked, but he’d seen the bruise crawling up his side, he’d  _ heard _ the stolen breaths each time Keith turned wrong. He was hurt, and if Keith was hurt, it meant Griffin or Kinkade fought back. 

It meant Keith was hungry again.

Lance scrubbed his hands back through his hair again and stamped over to his closet.

Dressed in something clean and soft and warm, Lance felt no better. In fact, it came off like a game of dress-up, something people turned into motivational pictures and mantras.  _ Dress to impress! Dress for the life you want to live! _ Lance pushed up his sweater sleeves and stopped thinking about it, though the sour ftown he got as a consolation prize for thinking of it in the first place refused to leave his mouth.

The hallway appeared almost alien, drawn in a different, narrower line. Days spent in his room does that, he supposed, or maybe his itchy, swollen eyes weren’t painting the correct picture. Either way, he didn’t feel as welcome in his house as he usually did. Or his house wasn’t as welcoming.

All the lights were off. Bedroom doors were closed. Sunlight struggled in through the windows, but obscured behind heavy snow clouds, its attempt was feeble at best. Dingy and gray like tepid sink water.

In the middle of the hall, Lance paused.

His chest drew tight, his breath went thin.

The sounds of movement were louder out here, the TV blaring more pronounced. And yet, it felt empty, like his family wasn’t there, filling up the rooms, wandering around downstairs, sitting in front of the television set watching the morning news.

For a dizzying moment, Lance convinced himself that he was in the wrong house.

No, impossible.

His baby pictures grinned back at him. Rachel and V’s faces looked his way from glossy portraits. The sepia-toned stares and smiles of his parents beamed from their wedding photos. He wasn’t in the wrong place. The house didn’t feel any different than normal. It was Lance who felt different, who, without his magic, simply saw the house as it always was: A house.

Quietly, as he rubbed his hands up his arms, Lance continued down the hall, ignoring his trembling fingers and what it meant that his heart skipped beats.

He didn’t go downstairs as he originally planned. He wasn’t hungry, and he knew the moment someone saw him, they’d hook him by the arm and drag him into the kitchen for breakfast. That’s how the McClain’s fixed things, by joining together and making food and eating away their worries.

Without his  _ mamá _ at the helm of the kitchen though, did it still work the same?

If a house was only a house, wasn’t food just food if not imbued with love and healing?

He wondered how she was doing.

There was nothing else he needed to do, nothing else he had to lose or give, so Lance, before he talked himself out of it, followed the hallway to the other end of the house, faced the closed bedroom door, and knocked.

His mother’s voice sounded behind it, speaking in tired Spanish for whoever it was to come in.

Lance pushed open the door.

The first thing he saw was her, sitting comfortably in bed, a thick quilt draped over her lap. A space heater whirred nearby, pumping the room full of a near-stifling, artificial warmth. A lamp glowed by her hands--the yellow-orange of a bulb about to give out--transforming the needlework in her hands from red to berry.

She glanced his way when he entered, and she glowed as brightly as sunshine in summer. Hurriedly, she set aside her wooden hoop and her needles and patted the empty space at her side. “Lance,  _ dulzura _ , what a surprise. Come in, sit with me.”

He sat with her. Her arms went around his shoulders immediately, squeezing him tight against her, her magic blooming within him as easy as that.

It was comforting because it was meant to be comforting, but also because Lance missed the feeling of magic buzzing inside him.

“Hey, I’m fine, you don’t need to do that,” he murmured, but leaned against her anyway, hugging her back. Some of his anxiety uprooted.

“Don’t lie,  _ mijo _ , it doesn’t look good on you.”

Lance winced and pulled her arms away. “I’m not, not really. Besides, I know you aren’t feeling good. I don’t want to make it worse.”

“ _ Tut _ , you sound like your father,” she said, not in an unkind way. She was all sunshine and smiles on that snowy day, the promise of June in December. “I heard you haven’t been out of your room much.”

“Rach told me the same about you,” he challenged. Quieter, he added, “Are you okay?”

All the times he’d checked on her before, she’d been sound asleep, bundled under her blankets or the gentle concern of his  _ papá _ , and Lance didn’t want to disturb them. He left, stayed in his room, and always told himself  _ she’ll be better tomorrow. You’ll talk to her tomorrow _ . And tomorrow was today, was right now, was this very moment.

Silver streaks shone through her hair. Had those always been there? Yes, though not as pronounced, not as dense near her temples or in her long braid. Lance smoothed his fingers over one, from root to ends. His  _ mamá _ swatted his hand away.

“Lance,” she warned.

Lance frowned at her tone. “That’s from me, isn’t it?”

Without hesitating, she said, “No, not you. It wasn’t the healing that did this.”

Then what?

Lance rubbed his hands on his pants, fidgeting. The urge to bounce his leg crawled up his foot, and he wiggled it, frowning at his bare toes. “Then what did?”

She stayed quiet for a long moment. The house settled, popped its old bones, and as Maria shifted into a more comfortable position, so did he. “There are natural conduits in the world. Storms are one--all the lightning and something to do with the ozone. Rainshowers, somewhat, but they’re harder to control. The best, the most steady, are large bodies of moving water--streams, oceans. Rivers.”

Lance looked at her. “Rivers?”

“Rivers,” she agreed. “And when we found you, Lance, the only option we had was to take you to the river.”

He bit his lip. Curiosity squirmed in his belly. Dread, too, at why that may be. “Why?”

Maria’s gaze on him never broke away. “Because it strengthens the magic. It hones it, betters it.” Her fingers brushed along the side of Lance’s face. “It unleashes our full potential. But, as most things do, it comes at a cost.”

_ Full potential _ . Lance always wondered about that. He surged and grew into his gifts, transformed them to fit certain needs, and sometimes it seemed like he could do a lot more with his than the rest of the family with theirs. His  _ mamá _ spiced their meals with magic to keep them strong and healthy, chased off colds and the dregs of exhaustion. Veronica slept and dreamt coming truths. Rachel saw into people’s heads. Only Nadia’s gifts changed and grew, much like flames; her fire no longer burned down chicken coops but cracked chestnuts and warmed Lance’s cold fingers. 

Under the weak lamplight, Lance looked at his hands, and he thought the same thing he did at the riverside, as Griffin crouched above him, spilling spite and intention.

_ What am I? _

“Your heart is heavy,” said his  _ mamá _ , with a certainty Lance once possessed. “If this is bothering you, we don’t need to--”

“You can feel that,” he asked, cutting her off. 

To which his  _ mamá _ admitted, “Hurting is hurting,  _ mijo _ , it doesn’t matter where the pain is.”

Lance took her offered hands and looked away. 

They were soft hands, skin shot with wrines and heavy with rings. She had ‘story hands’, as he once dubbed them, everything about them confessing a long, adoring history in every line and glittering gemstone. As kids, Luis and Rachel begged and begged until their  _ mamá _ sat them all down and gifted them those stories, one by one, until she ran out of rings and things to say. They heard it over and over again, how the gold, sunray ring around her thumb was the first thing their  _ papá _ ever gave her, on account that she lit up his world like dawn, and he thought about her before the day started and after the day ended. Twin rings on both her pinkies were heirlooms, as old as the family name, the metalwork vaguely vine-like or snake-line depending on how they were turned. Her wedding ring, of course, inset with winking blue topaz the same shade as the sea--or, if you asked Diego, the color of her eyes, which is where the sea, in a fit of jealousy, stole its inspiration. 

She wore one last ring on the middle finger of her right hand, a simple black band lacking any flash. Without jewels or an interesting design, it had the most bizarre story of all.

She claimed it came from the nighttime sky, in exchange for a week’s worth of stories. None of them believed her, but they paid rapt attention as she told them about it, and for the following week, she made up stories of heroes that shared all of their names. 

_ “I remembered the names so I could gift them to you, my strong, little ones. Even before you were born, I knew each one of you would be great.” _

His family had always been full of magic. Lance just never knew how to look for it.

Presently, he asked her, eyes focused on the ring, “Was this really a gift from the sky?”

Fondness relaxed her features. “What do you believe,” she asked, playing along with him. She must realize he darted around answering all the hard questions, the ones he wasn’t sure if he had answers for.

Lance thought about it, then said, “That it isn’t possible.”

“Anything is possible. You only need to know how things work.” She withdrew her hands, and slid the ring off. She set it in his palm. “What do you see?”

A ring made of black metal. Plain. Dull, without shimmer or shine.

But it wasn’t, not really.

As Lance brought it closer to his face, he noticed, for the first time, several small nicks wrapping around the band. Tally marks, straight and evenly spaced apart. Had they always been there? Lance’s heart sang  _ no _ but his mind said  _ I never looked at it this close before _ .

“Lines,” he said. He spun it in his fingers. “Like, eight of them.”

“Seven,” she corrected gently.

Understanding drew a small gasp from Lance’s lips. “One for each night.”

The smile she rewarded him with scrubbed away some of the bitterness Lance clung onto for the last few days. “And one for each story.”

Lance passed it back. “But that’s not really it. Is it?”

He watched her slip it back on. Without it, her hands looked wrong, like someone who thought they knew how her hands were supposed to look and assembled them incorrectly. Now, with the ring back, returned to the place it’d been for the entirety of Lance’s life, she was complete.

She bumped her elbow against his arm, and leaned in, whispering conspiratally, “How can you be so critical when you come from magic yourself? Is it magic? It is if you believe it is. It isn’t if you say it isn’t. That’s how it works.”

It was not how it worked. If it was, Lance would sense her emotions right this second, would see into the house in a way only he knew how. He appearicated her lightness and her teasing, however, and he would not be the one to break it.

“I guess,” he said, laughing a little, smiling a little. He found it wasn’t entirely forced. “If it is magic, then what does it do?”

She snapped her fingers like he’d asked the correct question. “Why don’t you take it and see?”

She went to remove it again, and Lance stopped her, folding his fingers over hers. “No, that’s okay. It. . .probably wouldn’t work anyway.”

“How can you say? You haven’t tried.”

The ring pressed into his palm regardless. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, not after she risked so much for him, not ever, so Lance put it on.

It fit his middle finger exactly.

He sat up a little straighter. Beside him, Lance sensed his mother’s smile.

Lance took the ring off and tried it on a different finger.

It fit.

He took it off again, tried another finger, another, placed it around his thumb.

It fit, it fit, it fit.

Lance looked over at her, his eyes wide, his heart racing miles.

“See,  _ mijo _ . I told you.  _ La magia _ .”

_ La magia _ . 

Magic.

Lance put it back around his middle finger, the same as how his mother wore it. “But,” he asked, “what does it do?"

“If I tell you, will you tell me why you’re hurting?”

She got him. Lance bit the inside of his cheek, then asked, “Will you tell me how you’re really feeling?”

To which she said, “Are we asking each other circles, Lance?”

He looked at her, her eyes so much like his, and thought about it. He didn’t want to answer her questions, but he wanted his questions answered, so he asked her one more to break the tie.

“I’ll tell you, but I want to know why the river did all this,” he said, as he drew a circle around her face, the silver threaded through her hair, the tired lines bracketing her mouth, fanning like wings from the corners of her eyes. “And the conduits. More about those.”

In truth, Lance wanted to know everything about the magic, this side of it. Maybe if he knew how the river worked, how storms and rain affected his gifts, his Empathy might heal. It might, with a little more trial and error, come back.

With a smile, with a touch of static-y warmth that slipped in and eased his heavy heart, his  _ mamá _ told him, “Deal.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Lance’s mind reeled as he slipped back into the hallway, no more than half-an-hour later.

It probably didn’t make sense to think he’d changed much in that amount of time, but it sure felt it while he headed downstairs, tracing the tallies on the ring he still wore. It felt heavier somehow, the metal cooler, the lines gouged in a little deeper. All because he knew the truth about it.

Seven tallies. Not for days of a week, not for stories told, but one for each member of his immediate family. A notch for all his siblings, for his  _ mamá _ and his  _ papá _ , and one for him. Did she put them there herself? No, the ring did that. Did it mean something? She thought so, but as to what, she couldn’t say. What she admitted was that, little by little, she fed her magic into it, a  _ teaspoon a day  _ as she said. The problem was, the magic liked the ring too much or the ring liked the magic, and either way it refused to leave it. Lance felt it vibrating, alive and warm, inside it, a stubborn thing.

In a way, it comforted him. It made him feel like his Empathy was starting to return. He knew it wasn’t--it didn’t entirely feel the same--but it was  _ magic _ , and some magic was better than nothing.

It inspired hope.

It gave Lance an anchor to latch onto, a place his mind could turn to instead of inward.

The living room was empty. The kitchen, too. On the stove, Lance found the blackened remains of biscuits and sausage sitting on a plate. For him, Lance assumed. The time on the stove’s clock read that it was closer to noon than not, so the rest of his family had already eaten this same, sad meal.

He took the biscuit off the plate, snapped off the burnt top, and walked with it to the windows, nibbing at an edge. It tasted funny, not because it was bad and burnt, but because his  _ mamá _ hadn’t made them.

How had he gone all his life not noticing all the magic around him, but now, within only a few months, felt it this deeply when it vanished?

Thinking back to the beginning of school, when August reigned over Indigo Pull in flush green and humid heat, Lance discovered he couldn’t accurately remember how his life had been before. Like after a bad accident, Lance  _ remembered _ it happened but not how much it’d hurt at the time.

Unconsciously, Lance pressed his fingers against his temple as he chewed his slow bites.

Unconsciously, the ring hummed around his finger like a racing heartbeat.

Unconsciously, Lance's arm began to shake.

Stories were the back- and rib-bones of his family. They existed in the everyday, passed over the dinner table morning, noon and night, marking meals and events and changes in the season, the weather, the upcoming holidays, who stopped in for a visit. They exchanged stories like coins, flashy, brilliant things worth a ransom. Stories flavored their lunches, sweetened their breakfast, and hid in a hole in the wall, bound in soft leather and time-thinned pages. They were gifts on Christmas, birthdays, on hard days. They streamed over bedsheets and summer-warmed rivers, thrilled laughter on cold winter nights. Sometimes, these stories were twined inside a ring, more mystery than understood. Sometimes, they took on the shape of a boy, lived within a boy,  _ were _ the boy from smile to feet.

Lance McClain heard these stories all his life. He lived them. He was one of them.

And everyone knew the best stories had magic of some kind. 

All stories  _ were _ magic, if one knew how to look.

And Lance, now, knew how to look.

Lance dropped his hand.

Char dusted his fingertips. The kitchen smelled like it, the burnt, trying scent of someone without a clue of how the kitchen worked. Lance spent enough time with his  _ mamá _ here--kneading dry cookie dough against the floured countertop, or stirring the stew pot clockwise, or stealing sampled bites off fresh, sticky monkey bread--to know the kitchen was a fickle thing. The stove alone needed reassurance and a hearty pat or two for it to work correctly, or a good, resounding kick when it was being particularly ill-tempered. For the best pots of coffee, his  _ papá _ hummed it the same, cheery tune. His  _ abuela _ polished bad tempers out of the counters and table every Sunday morning.

Dried herbs hung from a line of twine above the windows, bundles of sage, rosemary, sprigs of mint. Bottles of colored oil sat on the sill. Jars and pots lined the counter space, unlabeled unless you understood the way Maria McClain used color. Yellow for spice. Pink for sweet. Red for essentials like flour, cornmeal, and salt. A giant, family cookbook lay open on its broken spine, a recipe for homemade biscuits scrawled across the pages. Lance didn’t recognize the handwriting, but he did the Spanish as he skimmed it over.

Cracks and lines split the wooden counter, some from old age, others from a house full of growing kids. There were burns from carelessly placed pots, scars from knife cuts, a chunk missing that was entirely Lance’s fault. Well, Lance’s and Pidge’s and Hunk’s. Lance traced the mark and remembered when it’d happened, how the big, cast iron skillet slipped out of Hunk’s hands and struck it with a  _ bang _ that rattled the shutters. Pidge swore it could be fixed before they got caught. Lance knew his mother was already on her way downstairs.

There were a hundred other places Lance could see in the kitchen alone that had a memory of his friends attached to them.

There were places, though fewer, where Keith existed, too. Like here was the spot they set for him the entire year after his Pops died. Here was the place Lance stole a kiss when his  _ papá _ ducked into the fridge after a drink during Thanksgiving. Over there, Rachel teased him after he lost a race to Keith, and said something along the lines of  _ you gotta try harder if you want to win the prize _ . 

And here, in the doorway, propping the door open with a snow-covered boot, was the place Keith now stood, watching him in his intense, quiet way.

Lance pushed away from the counter.

Keith's face had the same, wind-touched look as the night before, pink pinched in his cheeks and flushing his nose. His hair billowed like a thundercloud around his head. He’d changed clothes since Lance last saw him, and they looked suspiciously like Marco’s old sweats and a long-sleeved band tee of Luis’. 

“I thought you left,” Lance said, for lack of anything else. Old hurt reared its head. It held him rooted to the spot, replaced the ache surging through him with a crueler kind.

Keith pushed a hand back through his hair. It fell softly against his ears, skimmed the tops of his shoulders in a freshly washed sort of way. An itch of longing tickled Lance’s palms. He ignored it.

“I did,” Keith admitted, folding his arms across his chest. That same old habit, his hands clutching his elbows. “For a little while. I--”

Two sets of tiny feet thundered behind him, around him, shot into the kitchen. Two excited voices shouted, “ _ Tío! _ ” at the same time. Two extentions of Lance’s heart raced forward and grabbed him by the hands.

“You’re up!” said Sylvio. His cheeks were pink too, his excitement the kind that came from snow days and playing outside for hours.

“We were gonna get you but Keith said we should wait,” explained Nadia, mistaking the heat in Lance’s tone for something else. “Because you were sleeping.”

Lance glanced at Keith. Keith shrugged and looked away.

“That’s alright. You two warm up, and I’ll join you for round two, okay?”

Nadia beamed. “I’m  _ already _ warm,” she boasted, and so she was, her little hands hot around Lance’s.

She wasn’t wearing a coat or mittens, unlike Sylvio, who was bundled from head-to-toe in a puffy jacket and had a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Lance reasoned, like Keith, the cold didn’t affect her the same.

A soft laugh expanded his chest. “Okay, be nice,” he chided. “It’s almost lunch anyway. How about we eat, then go outside again? Sound fair?”

“I  _ guess _ ,” Nadia said, afflicted, like Lance suggested a punishment and not a helping hand.

Lance ruffled her hair and shooed her away. “Get out of here,” he told her. To Sylvio, he said, “Do you ever think it’s a little unfair we can’t just run out in the snow like them?” He hooked a thumb back at Keith when he said it, and he grinned around his cupped hand, hiding it from the others.

Sylvio shrugged his shoulders. “It’s okay. My coat’s really cool, so I don’t mind. Plus, Nadia can do this thing where she, like, heats it up on the inside, so I’m not cold at all!”

“Like an oven,” Nadia giggled.

“Yeah! Like an oven!”

“So does that make  _ you  _ lunch?” Lance reached out and grabbed at Sylvio, who shrieked and darted behind Keith’s legs, fast even in his heavy jacket.

“It does  _ not _ ! I wouldn’t even taste good,  _ Tío _ !” He peeked around Keith, and stuck out his tongue. “Don’t be weird!”

Lance shrugged, laughter bursting out of him. “You’re the one that said it was like an oven!”

“So!”

“You set yourself up, Sylvio. I don’t make the rules. I just follow them.”

Sylvio rolled his eyes. “ _ Ugh _ , whatever,” he said, making a hilarious face of pinched brows and mouth, a caricature of disgust. 

If Lance glanced a little higher, he’d have seen the soft way amusement held Keith’s face between its hands. He didn’t look up. 

Sylvio pushed away and ran off, presumably before Lance continued his line of teasing or before Keith really picked sides and offered him up to Lance. Nadia, in a blaze of laughter, followed after him, sucking the warmth in the room along with her.

It’s an odd thing, when a room drains as it sometimes does, like when the sun sets and steals the light or a person leaves and takes all the joy.

That’s what happened when the kids left. Without them there, Lance went back to hurting and meanness, and his smile promptly fell.

Keith shifted in the doorway. His hands squeezed around himself a little tighter.

“Lance, listen,” he started.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Lance interjected.

Keith’s arms fell. “Lance,  _ please _ \--”

“I said,  _ I don’t want to hear it _ .”

Stung, Keith took a step back. His hands shook, his arms shook, the whole floor shook under his feet.

When it looked like he was going to turn and go, he stormed up to Lance instead. He didn’t get too close, but he was near enough that when he jerked up his shirt, Lance saw the bruise from last night had lost most of its color.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, and God, did he sound it. Lance’s throat tightened, and he could only imagine how much worse it would be, if he felt this as much as heard it. “I had to. I--didn’t want something to happen. And I. . .I waited. For you to wake up. I did, I  _ promise _ I did, but the longer I waited, the worse it got, and I couldn’t--” The shirt fell; Lance clenched his jaw and glanced away, staring at the cookbook and all its dog-eared pages. “. . .It couldn’t wait.”

It made sense, returning to cats and dogs and whatever wild things Keith killed in the forest. But it also hurt a little too, because everything hurts when you're fighting with someone you love.

Lance heaved out a breath. He pushed a hand back through his hair so he wouldn’t do it to Keith instead.

When he didn’t say anything, Keith went on, “I’ve been out with the kids all morning.”

Which meant,  _ I’ve been here nearly the whole time, just like you asked _ .

Lance remembered telling him  _ I just want  _ you. If he peeled away the layers of hurt, that want was still there, strong and steady, beating in his chest like a second heart. No, like it  _ was _ his heart, singular.

He shook his head. Keith’s fingers fluttered out towards him, seeking a touch, and Lance rocked back on his foot to make it clear it wasn’t allowed.

“Did someone corner you for a shower,” he asked him, tilting his head at Keith’s clothes. “Those are my brothers.”

Keith plucked at the shirt almost unconsciously. “. . .your dad saw me come back. He took me by the arm and dragged me inside and said something like, ‘Nothing helps better than a warm shower,’ and found me some clothes.”

That was a very Diego thing to say, something so much like Lance’s  _ papá _ that it inspired a smile before Lance could stop it. “Yeah. That’s dad alright.” It made him wonder, too, about why Keith went back to hiding. And why not ask it now, when the kitchen was a lonely, desolate place and they both were as cold as the tile beneath their feet? 

“. . .why aren’t you going home, Keith?”

Keith shifted his weight from leg to leg, swaying gently between answering honestly or brushing him off. Lance didn’t need Empathy for that--he recognized it in every part of him, his clenched hands, the restless movement, the sharp way Keith’s face transformed. He wasn't the lovely, lonely boy who climbed in through his bedroom window: This was Keith Kogane at August sundown, standing as still as the gravestones in the advancing dark.

Lance tried again, “What happened?”

Because something must have if Keith refused to go back.

Finally, Keith said, voice carefully dead, “I thought you didn’t want to hear it?”

And then he turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Lance standing there again, much like he had the night before, blinking after the image of his back.

Only this time, Lance followed him out.

“Okay, point taken. I’m being awful, and you know what? I know it. I  _ know _ that I’m being awful.” They stood in the narrow hallway that led to the front door, huddled amongst the winter coats hung on the wall and the family shoes lined beneath them. Keith faced the door; Lance stared at his back. “I  _ feel _ awful because I’m acting like this, and because everything about the past few days has been--well, it’s been fucking shitty and I’m  _ tired _ . Of all of it. I told you that. I told you and you went off anyway and now I have to deal with that too.

“But, if something’s happened with Shiro, Keith, you can tell me. If. . .if you want to tell me, that is,” he said, the thunder draining out of him the longer he spoke. He combed his fingers back over his scalp again, scratching deep, focusing on the lines of pain he drew. Why did everything always get so messy? Why was he deliberately trying to keep it that way? Under his careful attention, Lance's heart squeezed. His breath went short. “. . .I’m sorry, about--”

“Stop.”

Lance shut his mouth. His fingers shook.

Patiently, he waited for Keith to turn around, to set his violet eyes on him, and was disappointed.

“If you’re sorry,” Keith told the door. “Then I’m sorry, too. I’ve  _ been _ sorry. If we’re both sorry, can we both forgive each other and move on?”

Lance swallowed. That, honestly, seemed the best course of action. Lance didn't want to fight. He didn't  _ want _ to feel this way. He said, “Will you look at me?”

After a pause, Keith looked back at him. “Why,” he asked, “do you keep asking me that?”

“Why,” Lance responded, “do you keep looking away?”

Lance watched a flash of raw pain cross Keith's face. It lit his eyes, drew his brow low; it jumped the entire way up Keith’s clenched jaw. This was the boy at the graveyard made new. This was grief come to life again, nuanced in every one of Keith's beautiful features.

They both waited. 

Lance, on a confession. Keith, for his heart to slow.

The grandfather clock wheezed, noon arriving in twelve, clanging notes. Deep in the house, a door opened. Murmurs stuck on the wallpaper's drawn thorns.

Quietly, Keith breathed, "Walk with me?"

Lance grabbed his jacket off the hook as an answer. He jammed his feet into a pair of boots--Marco's, given how they fit--and stood there as Keith pushed open the door and let all the cold inside.

"The kids are gonna be sore," Lance said offhandedly, stepping out onto the porch. The world shone like a polished dime, all that he could see minted and new under the snow. He wanted to run in it. Jump in it. Shove snowballs down the back of Keith's shirt and watch as laughter bloomed pink in his cheeks.

In another time, another place, there was a Lance that was probably doing just that, and he was laughing and whole and full of everyone's emotions. His fingers were pink and stinging. His chest sore from mirth and every lungful of cold air. In that world, Lance only knew happiness. In that world, Griffin didn't bash his head in and leave him to die.

And in another? Well, Lance didn't feel like thinking about that too much. There were a thousand different outcomes for that alone, most of them dark and terrible, like the feeling stuck in Lance’s heart.

He scuffed his toe into the snow, digging up a small trench where he stood.

Keith came up beside him and let out a breath that fogged around his face. “They won’t. And if they are, we’ll make it up to them.”

Lance kicked at the ground again. “They’re monsters, just gonna warn you. You say that now but just wait until Nadia is saying you owe her three weeks of playtime instead of one afternoon.”

“Those are some heavy interest rates.”

“Tell me about it.”

The weight of Keith’s stare hit him, and Lance looked up before he missed it. Sunlight struggled through the clouds--it wasn’t enough to hurt him, or Keith wouldn’t be standing so nonchalantly out in the open--and it touched his face in ways Lance wished he could.

“They’re worried about you, you know,” Keith added softly.

Lance stamped a foot down and started walking. “Yeah. Surprise. Everyone is.”

Keith kept stride with him, and though he was the one to ask, it seemed like he was more willing to follow Lance around than decide on a destination himself. Whatever. Now that he’d left his room, Lance realized just how long he’d spent buried in his own thoughts. Getting out felt nice, if not on the harsher side of freezing cold and lonely.

“Lance--”

Again, full stop. Lance scowled, caught himself, eased his expression.

“Drop it,” Lance told him. “I asked you a question. Several questions. I thought that’s why we came out here, so you’d answer them.”

Keith frowned. “We did.”

“Then stop telling me stuff I’m already super aware of.” Quieter, losing heat, Lance said, “Please.”

That did it.

Keith sighed again. They headed for the road step by slippery step. Indigo Pull, dressed in white, looked as far away from home as Lance’s house did. Lance tucked that away to think about later.

“Where should I start,” Keith asked, not to Lance specifically, but to himself. A complicated expression took over his face, and Lance stared at it hard, trying to work out the meaning behind it before Keith caught him. “. . .a lot’s happened.”

Lance waited. 

It went without saying he was grouped into that ‘a lot’.

Icicles dripped off the mailbox and the thin, barbwire fence lining the property. Trees creaked under the weight of their snowy branches. Slush crunched underfoot as Lance led Keith towards town, the roads salted and muddied from use even this far out of the way. Come nightfall, these patches of melt would refreeze, and Indigo Pull would be once again right where it started.

Lance leapt over a sizeable puddle filling a pothole. Keith stepped around it, eyes up at the sky, a worried knot pinched between his brow.

After a moment and a quarter of a mile passed, Lance elbowed him. “How about the start,” he suggested and watched Keith for the instant his eyes dropped to his, and the resulting warmth he felt when their stares met. “Or all over. I can keep up.”

Whatever Lance expected, it wasn’t Keith saying, “Mom’s back.”

He stopped. Blinked at Keith like he’d spoken a foreign language at him, not simple English. Not two, common words.

“Your mom--”

“--is back,” Keith finished. 

He lifted his hands suddenly and pushed his hair back from his face. It was long and heavy and as wild as Keith surely felt inside. Lance didn’t know--he wanted to know,  _ badly _ , desperately, all the words that meant that same thing--but all he could do was reach out and grab Keith’s hands before he ripped out his own hair in frustration.

“Keith,” he said, and held on. “Talk.”

Again, pain tightened his features. Then sadness. Defeat. “The same day you--” He wouldn’t say it. Keith swallowed the words and avoided it, avoided looking at Lance’s face as he went on. He stared unblinkingly at their hands instead. “I--I don’t even know what to say. That entire day. . .it was one thing after another after another. . .”

Keith withdrew a hand and pressed it over his eyes.

Lance held the other between his own. His skin was cold, colder than Lance’s winter-numbing fingers, and that, like Keith’s reluctance to say what needed said, worried him.

But then, just when Lance was about to help steer the conversation somewhere else, somewhere less painful, Keith drew in a shuddering breath and told him everything.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


By the time Keith finished, Lance’s head was pounding and he felt sick to his stomach.

In means of walking, they hadn’t gone too far from the farm. At a point, they both forgot they could move their feet, and fell still on the roadside, Keith telling Lance everything as the trees on either side of them hissed in the wind. Time meant nothing without sunlight to gauge it. An hour could’ve passed, a day, and Lance wouldn’t have known the difference between them.

Keith wasn’t looking at him again.

And now Lance knew why: 

“Sometimes I’m afraid I'll look and you won’t be there when I do.” Keith words, now forever burned in Lance’s memory. It’s why he wouldn’t touch him either, why he waited on Lance to reach out first, because everyone knows it’s impossible to hold onto ghosts.

It’s a miracle Keith was still standing.

If it were Lance, he’d have collapsed under the weight of it already.

“Shit,” Lance said, not for the first time. He rubbed his hands down his face and cast a helpless glance around the deserted road. Even the wind was unoccupied and quiet, the Indigo Pull traffic hushed for the day. Occasionally, snowmelt dripped and plipped further in the woods. Otherwise it was just Lance’s soft swearing and Keith’s uneven breathing and the roar of their racing hearts.

Keith’s face twisted.

How many days of his life were dedicated to losing everything he had?

Lance wasn’t sure when it happened, but all his anger had fled. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so mad at Keith to start with, why it felt like everything he did or Lance tried was wrong. Even the thing with Griffin and Kinkade--after hearing Keith break down during his retelling erased any hurt Lance carried because of it.

Krolia was in town and practically the first thing she admits was she had a hand in turning Keith, and Shiro  _ and _ Adam may have known about it from the start. Now, Pidge and Hunk knew, which Lance always suspected, at least from Pidge.

And to top it all off, Keith nearly watched Lance die. All in the same, short span of hours.

Keith blamed himself, in a way, because if he’d been a little faster, if he’d not hesitated on which direction he needed to go, Keith might’ve reached Lance before then, when he first felt Lance’s pain in his head.

Because that’s what it was, the pain that sent Keith to his knees in the middle of downtown: he felt Lance’s pain as his own, just like Lance had taken on his bruised knuckles in the early days when his Empathy was waking up.

The why, though, that was the real mystery. One of the several now lined up in front of them.

It, as Keith had said, was  _ a lot _ .

It, in reality, was too goddamn much.

Lance said it again, “Shit.”

And then he stepped into Keith and jerked him forward. His arms snaked around his back, and Lance squeezed Keith against him like they could meld together by the sheer force of Lance’s conviction.  _ I wish I could take some of this from you _ , he thought, as he fisted his hands in the back of Keith’s shirt.

Empathy or not, Lance’s touch had the same effect.

Keith sank against him at once. His hands came up, indecisive in where they needed to be. One pressed against the back of Lance’s skull, the other grabbed his lower back, then they switched and pressed against his shoulders, snagging in his jacket. Finally, they fell to his hips and settled. The breath he drew in shuddered and broke and pinched Lance’s heart.

Lance hushed him and traced his fingertips against the back of his neck. “It’s okay,” he promised, and like he’d said before, when Keith finally gathered the courage to visit him after he left the hospital, Lance reminded him, “I’m right here.”

Right here. Always right here.

Keith’s weight became his weight became the same center of gravity. They swayed when the wind picked up again, a whirlwind of loose snow and aching, low moans sounding from the trees. Lance tilted his head up to see Keith’s face, and noticed the clouds churning overhead--

\--and the first godfingers of light shredding them apart.

He barely drew in a breath before reflex kicked it.

Lance grabbed Keith and hauled him back into the trees. He shoved the two of them under the densest spray of evergreen needles he could find, slamming Keith against the trunk in the process. Quickly, Lance jerked his jacket over both of their heads. Keith’s hands were already up, clutching at the front of Lance’s shirt, hidden in the protective shadow now thrown over them. Anger rolled off him in waves.

“ _ Damnit _ ," Keith snapped, faltering as the dim around them bloomed in light. Sunlight from overheard, the snow bouncing it back.

Lance shook his head. His attention splintered--to Keith's face, his hands, searching for burns, listening for pain in his voice. “Is this enough? Will it--”

“No. No, I’ll be okay. I’m covered.”

All except his hands and his face. Why didn’t they think of that before? The wind raged around them, whipping at Lance’s jacket. He fisted it in his hands and braced it against the tree trunk, shielding Keith with his own body.  _ Please stop, please stop, please stop _ .

“Goddamnit.  _ Goddamnit _ , we’re so stupid.” Lance dropped his head to Keith’s shoulder, sucking in a whistling breath between his teeth. “It’s the middle of the  _ day _ , why didn’t we think of that?”

Keith shook gently beneath him. Slowly, he slid to the ground, and Lance went right along with him. It was easier that way, more comfortable, if you ignored the damp racing into your clothes, which Lance did, out of pure, stubborn spite.

“It looked like it’d be cloudy the rest of the day,” Keith admitted. Lance heard it when he swallowed. “This is my fault. I should’ve thought--”

“It’s not your fault. It’s the weather’s fault. Stupid clouds. Stupid sunlight.”

“Stupid skin,” Keith added. “Stupid curse.”

“Stupid us,” Lance finished, coming full circle. The cold pressed against his back where his shirt had ridden up. He shuddered too, and frowned to himself. “We’re in it now, aren’t we?”

“You aren’t. You don’t have to stay like this, Lance.”

Like this, meaning under the jacket, too. Or even worry about it when the sunlight touched his bare skin. Lance knew that. He also knew that he didn’t want to risk leaving and accidentally burn Keith in the process.

“Do so.” He leaned back only slightly, carefully, testing each inch to make sure Keith had plenty of room and cover. He did. Lance breathed a little easier when he could see his face. “Well. This is  _ exactly _ how I thought my day would go.”

Keith thumped his head back against the tree. He closed his eyes briefly. “Honestly? Same.”

A corner of Lance’s mouth quirked up. “Can’t win for losing, can we?”

Keith stayed quiet a moment, then said, “You told me something once, a while ago, about boxes. What was it?”

Lance replied immediately, “Same stuff, different box--”

“--different stuff, same box,” Keith concluded. “That seems to fit the situation.”

In a way. Lance liked that he remembered it. He liked, too, that when Keith opened his eyes, he looked right at him.  _ Finally _ . Something unwounded inside of him, something bitter and tense he didn’t realize he’d been holding onto for so long.

Lance plucked at the collar of Keith’s shirt, and in a soft voice, he told him, “I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk the last few days.”

Keith grabbed Lance’s hand. They slid their fingers together automatically, as if there wasn’t any other way. “Me too,” he said. “I’m sorry I ran off and did all that when you asked me not to.”

“I hope you really did beat the crap out of him, though.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Keith said quietly.

Without anger filling Lance up, he realized the only other thing was longing. Even pressed against Keith, practically sitting in his lap, as close as they’d been in days, Lance missed him, and missed him badly.

“Too late,” Lance murmured. “Don’t you know that’s all I do now? Worry. And push people away. And not realize someone’s hurting worse right in front of me.”

A cool touch fell to Lance’s cheek. Lance leaned into it and swallowed down the burn of sudden tears running up his throat.

“We’re okay,” Keith said. It sounded like a question.

“We’re okay,” Lance agreed. It sounded definite.

Thing was, now that everything lay out in the open, Lance felt buoyant, his chest pumped full of helium. There were things to deal with, Keith’s mom and Shiro and what it meant that Keith had felt every second Lance was by the river. The aftermath with Griffin, all the questions Lance had about Kinkade. But there also came a sense of relief. They’d be okay. They  _ were _ okay. They were here, together, and they’d figure everything out as it came to them.

Lance hadn’t forgotten their pact.

By the look Keith wore, it appeared he hadn’t either.

Slowly, his worry for Keith faded.

The desire, at being thrown this closely together, did not.

_ Stupid _ , Lance told himself, even as he felt his heart shift into a different kind of beat. If Keith heard it, he didn’t give any indication except by watching Lance back, his eyes at half-mast. 

_ Stupid _ , Lance thought again, as he leaned forward. They were barely a breath apart, lips hovering close, and still Lance held back, waiting, seeing what Keith would do.

For a moment, he did nothing.

Seconds passed, slow as molasses spilling from a tipped jar. There lingered a promise of sweetness in all the mess, if only one of them leaned forward that final bit of space and let lips go where they were naturally drawn.

Life was that same kind of mess. 

Life was  _ always _ a mess, sticky and hard to clean. But for a moment, maybe. . .

Keith grabbed Lance's face and leaned into him, and then it didn't matter how they were hurting, how they were getting over anger and all the heavy things clawing their hearts apart. Because, all at once, it fell away. The wind grabbed it up and pitched it far into Indigo Pull, past the slushy roads and frozen trees. There wasn't any room left for it in the small space under Lance's jacket anyway--no room between the two huddled beneath it. 

Keith's mouth found his, and Lance was a goner. Lance was the boy running through Indigo Pull at midnight, panting and sweating and bent-double, Keith's back yards ahead of him, a portrait of moving parts and warm muscles. Lance was once again the boy kneeling down in the grit, blacktop biting his knees, his lungs in agony from holding his breath as Keith took his face between his hands, gentle as a song.

Winter melted away under their small shifts and sighs and the hungry touches Lance sent under Keith's shirt. They really had to stop this breaking apart and slamming back together again--Lance's mouth couldn't take it, and his heart was absolutely fed-up.

Keith's hands roamed. He traced Lance's ears, twirled his hair, drew his fingers down his cheeks. Lance barely kept still. Only his diligent task of pinning the jacket up over their heads kept Lance from losing himself entirely.

That, and the cold licking up his pants.

He broke away with a gasp. "Keith, wait." It was the exact opposite of what he wanted. All Lance had waited for was this: a distraction, a means to forget, Keith like  _ this _ , gasping, lips swollen from kissing him and the sharpening tips of his fangs.

And he still wanted it. 

He just didn't want it served freezing on the roadside, half-hidden under a tree and Lance's quick thinking. Or maybe he did. The way Keith cocked his chin at him, his lips parted over his teeth, flared something bright and pleasant in Lance's belly.

Lance pressed a hand over Keith's face. "Stop that," he groaned.

"Stop what?" Asked like he didn't have a clue.

"What you're doing. With your face. And--" Keith shifted under him, and their bodies slid together, pressing in certain ways that Lance both instantly sank into and tried to pull away from. "-- _ oh _ . That--that, too."

Keith's breathy laugh fluttered across his palms. Lance imagined clamping his fingers shut over the noise, capturing it for later, like he used to with fireflies during heady, summer nights. Could you bottle a laugh? Stuff it in a jar and seal the lid tight so it wouldn't leak out over time? If it was possible, if Lance found a way, how many mason jars and repurposed coke bottles would line Lance's windowsill? How many would clutter his desk, fill the floor, be within reach? How many would he bury in the deepest reaches of his dresser, carefully nestled inside an old, fleece jacket for safekeeping?

Like stars glittering across the swells of high tide, the number was fathomless. Infinite. Mirrored, doubled, and endless, endless, endless.

Keith smiled at him. Reading his thoughts? Feeling his feelings? Or simply knowing the wistful way Lance's face went when he thought of silly things?

"What are you thinking about," he asked, right on the money. 

Lance shrugged and glanced away. He studied the tented fabric over their heads, discerning sunlight from cloudlight from hopeful thinking.

"It's dumb," he explained. "Also, hold on. I'm gonna check to see if the clouds rolled back in."

Keith promptly hid his hands and turned his face away from the lifting gap Lance stuck his head through. "I bet it isn't dumb."

Blinking at the change of light, Lance let out a grateful breath. Whatever scattered cloud cover had stitched itself brand new over the last few minutes, and the sky was once again a seamless, bleak gray. Flurries drifted lazily in the air.

"It's good out here." Lance tugged his jacket back and bundled it around himself, clamping it tight across his chest. A shiver rolled down his spine. "We should get back home before it tries to ruin our day again. Or, you know, I lose my knees to frostbite."

Keith blinked at him, blinked at the glittering needles suspended overhead. "That would be the smart thing." And yet, he gripped Lance's hips when he started to get up. "Wait. You didn't answer me."

"I did. I said it was dumb. Come on, we gotta go." Keith didn't relent. His fingers dug in a little deeper. Lance was no fool. He knew what he'd do if Keith kept on, and there was no way he was going to risk it now that they were finally on the mend. "Fine. I was thinking of how many bottles I'd need to hoard away your laughter, okay? See? Dumb.  _ And _ embarrassing.  _ Muchas gracias  _ for not letting up."

He earned a new laugh from his confession, a sweeter kind, one Lance liked a lot better than the prior, breathier one. This one sounded like pure, golden amusement. 

Lance missed feeling it alongside him.

It took no time at all to make it back to the farm, lesser time still to briskly trot up the driveway and back inside. Keith kicked his boots clean on the porch, while Lance wasted not a second more from embracing the gift of central heating. They left their damp shoes and Lance's jacket in the hallway, then snuck upstairs, skirting around the living room and the scattered members of Lance's family lounging around the quiet television set.

They didn't make it too far before Rachel called up, "You two have an hour before supper. Don't make me come get you." She added, specifically for Lance's mortification, "Because I  _ will _ throw open your bedroom door without warning."

Red faced, Lance glanced back at Keith, toeing the line between alarm and anticipation. 

Keith scratched his neck and looked away, a wrinkle of concentration appearing between his brows. Whatever it was he thought next, Rachel answered, "I get that, but we miss him, too."

"Rach! Please! Shut up!" Lance covered his face and stomped the rest of the way to his room, Keith trailing close behind. The second his bedroom door shut, Lance whirled on him. Hands up. Ears pink. "Please tell me you weren’t thinking about anything--like  _ that _ ."

Keith lifted a shoulder. "I wasn't," he said. Lance had no way to know if he lied or told the truth.

"Keith."

"Lance."

"I want you to know that I’m going to hurl myself out the window now, thanks."

He turned. Keith was there in a second, his arms sliding around Lance's middle, lightly holding him back. They were back-to-chest, chest-to-back, Keith's hands laced over Lance's stomach. There was absolutely nothing erotic about it, but Lance's pulse surged anyway. 

"And I want  _ you _ to know that I'll catch you, if you do," Keith pointed out, voice a low rumble in his ear. Lance felt every syllable roll down to his toes.

"You," he breathed, "are a liar."

"Maybe," Keith murmured. His lips skimmed up Lance's throat. It took three, soft kisses before his fangs made an abrupt appearance, the points scratching deliciously across his skin. 

Lance shuddered. He shut his eyes, sank back--and then Keith was gone, very suddenly braced against Lance's desk instead, head bowed, shoulders like carved marble beneath his shirt.

"Damnit." Barely flexing his fingers drew a low groan from the wood. Chips splintered off in Keith’s hands, pulverized to sawdust. Keith snapped his arms away. Then, with more feeling, " _ Damnit _ ."

Heart hammering, still caught up in the  _ what ifs  _ of three seconds ago, Lance went to him and rubbed his hands up his back. "Hey. It's okay--"

"No, it's not. Nothing about this is." Lance thought he meant what was happening to his face and the dust now on his hands, but he couldn't be sure. Keith wouldn't turn around.

So much for all their progress.

Carefully, Lance suggested, "Should I get my jacket?" Keith finally looked back, eyes a bright, bewildered purple. "So, we can set the mood, you know?"

Keith's responding sigh sounded more laugh than dismissal. "What are we even doing," he asked, which was, in Lance's book, probably the best way to kill any prelude to how the next hour or so could've gone. Verbal ice water. 

What  _ were _ they doing?

Lance left him and flopped across his bed. "Letting ourselves be stupid teenagers for once," he suggested. "Or getting fed up with all the bad stuff going on, so we find whatever good we can? I don't know. Is it so bad to want to ignore everything for a little while? Pretend it's all okay and  _ going _ to be okay?" Lance wanted that most of all. He peeked over at Keith and found his eyes trained his way. "I think we've earned a break. Don't you?"

Keith thought about it until his decision pulled him back over to the bed, and he sat down, perched on the edge of the mattress like a bird. Reminiscent of last night, except neither of them were angry, only hurting still. Both of their wounds ran deep.

Lance sat up. He scooted back across the sheets until his spine hit the headboard. His legs stretched out at their longest had enough reach Lance managed to nudge Keith's thigh.

"I know  _ I _ want a break," he said softly.

Keith tilted his head. He breathed a heavy sigh and pressed his hands over his eyes, but when Lance instructed him to  _ come here _ , there wasn't any hesitation between words and action. With attentive hands, Lance coaxed Keith where he wanted him, his fingers finally brushing through Keith's thick hair when Keith planted his head in the middle of Lance's lap.

Several minutes passed like that, in silence, Lance finger-combing Keith's hair, Keith resting with his eyes closed. A perfect portrait of sleeping. Except he wasn't. Every so often, a tremor rolled up his back and he breathed a soft, involuntary hum of pleasure whenever Lance's fingers found the ticklish patches behind his ears. After that, Lance deliberately sought out those sensitive places, like down the back of his neck or along his jaw. Without his Empathy, this was the best Lance could do.

It wasn't the same. 

But for both of them, at least for this small window of time, it was enough.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The questions come after supper, an affair they both attended for the sake of Lance's family instead of hunger, though both were delighted to see Maria finally out of her room. At Diego's insistence, she remained parked firmly in a chair at the head of the table while he and Veronica made a quick supper of jalapeno-spiced cornbread and chili. Keith watched Lance nibble on the same wedge of cornbread the entire time, the meager bites stolen between a silly conversation with Nadia and a slightly less silly debate with Luis over chores.

By the time Keith helped Lance gather the dishes, his curiosity took voice.

Question one: "Why aren’t you eating?"

Answer: "I ate."

Then, reconsidering, a sinkful of bubbles blinking out one by one the longer the pause went on, "Okay. Maybe not. I haven't really been hungry since. . .well, you know."

Once the dishes were washed and put away, Lance led Keith back up to his room, and his hands--still damp and perfumed from the lemon dish soap--reached for him. Keith knew what Lance asked for in this searching gesture, and they tumbled back into bed as they'd been before, with Keith laying in Lance's lap so Lance might spend the next millennium brushing tangles and knots out of his hair.

As night grew deeper and Keith grew more restless, Lance took his turn at asking questions.

Question two: "What are we going to do now?"

Keith hoped they stayed like this until another three days passed, but he knew that wasn't an answer Lance would like.

Answer: "What do you want us to do?"

Lance's hands stilled. Regret settled behind Keith's ribs.

Answer, revised: “I don’t think I’m ready to go back yet.”

It would be easier if Lance could feel the dread Keith held onto, the sickness low in his belly, everytime his thoughts veered towards Shiro and his mom.  _ I’m the reason you were turned _ . The words stung whenever he thought of them, every second they rolled in his head as he laid in the hunting shack, braced against the wind, trying his best to ignore how little distance stretched between him and this very room.

The last week had worn him down enough.

It’d tried to take everything from him, or else ruin it. He just got Lance back. Keith really didn’t want to risk it and head back to the apartment. For one, he didn’t know what he’d find waiting for him. Shiro in a flurry of panic? His mom gone again, no reason left to stay since she told him what she needed to? Maybe he’d try to open the door and his key wouldn’t fit. Maybe he’d push it open and his body would refuse to move past the threshold.

Keith folded his arms over his head. Lance’s hands lifted, then picked up a new task of sliding up Keith’s arms, ever in motion.

“Okay,” Lance said over the maze he drew along Keith’s skin. “Would it help if I said I’d go with you?”

He thought about it. He didn’t have to think about it for long.

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

Keith lowered his arms. “Now?”

Lance nodded. His eyes were a blue so sharp they cut Keith down to the fleshy bits, reading his reluctance as easily as if he’s gifts had returned. “If you want.”

Keith chewed the inside of his check.

And in the quiet, Lance kept talking, explaining himself, “Would you feel better or worse the longer you wait? Because you’re miserable right now, Keith.” He didn’t add that that was due to several, slowly healing reasons. That part was understood. “Even if it goes the absolute worst way it could possibly go, you still have a home.” His hands slid down Keith’s back. “You can stay with me.” 

No more nights spent in an old hunting shed, or in any of the other abandoned places in Indigo Pull that let him in. Keith had a place now, right in this very room, if everything went like how he thought it would.

_ Besides _ , Lance’s look said,  _ Don’t you want to know what happened? _

He did. But Keith didn’t want to admit that it also scared him, too.

Slowly, he sat up.

If he hadn’t gone out the night before and dealt with Griffin and Kinkade, Keith would’ve refused on principle and stayed in the comfort of Lance’s lap. But he knew it was only fair. He knew it was a compromise, in a way. Doing something he didn’t want to do because he did something Lance didn’t want him to do.

It was the last thing Keith could give him to feel absolutely certain he’d be forgiven.

Lance watched him. His hands stayed in his lap, ready for Keith’s decision either way.

Keith really didn’t deserve him, his soft looks or the comfort of his hands, but now that he almost lost them for good, Keith didn’t want to give them up. And Lance was right--he  _ was _ curious. The night he left Shiro’s apartment in Verdant Run was a blur at best, a puzzle still broken apart in its box.

With a sigh and a moment to steel himself, Keith got up. Lance’s feet hit the floor a second after.

“Okay,” he said as Lance came up beside him. “Let’s get this over with.”


	28. Chapter 28

The roads were quiet, windows dark--blinds lowered, curtains drawn, lamps snuffed out for the night. Blue shadows spilled over moonlit lawns. Painter-stroke boughs held swaths of snowfall, an illusion of spring-lush leaves done in white and silver-blue. Snow clung to Lance's eyelashes. It drifted in his hair, and Keith's, where it briefly became star-bright, a mock galaxy that melted and reformed with each step deeper into Indigo Pull.

They came across a chilly-looking cat, its fur dusted in snowflakes, rifling through a split garbage bag for scraps. Lance crouched and held out his palms towards it, feeling instantly bad that it must be frozen solid in this weather. But all his attempts at clucking his tongue and making kissing noises fell flat. Though the cat’s ears lay back on its head, and its tail lashed in clear acknowledgement, it didn’t glance Lance’s way.

Keith, after spending a moment watching this sad display, knelt beside Lance and held out his hand. "Come here," he murmured.

The cat stilled. It blinked its amber eyes at them.

Then it darted across the street and immediately bumped its head against Keith's palm, its chest humming with a deep purr of affection. Keith fondled its ears, allowed it to brush up against him, and Lance swept his fingers over its back, knocking the snow away.

It was a sweet thing once its fear waned. Black as the nighttime hour, with huge, moonlit eyes the color of pumpkin rind. As Lance suspected, it was freezing to the touch, and he bundled it against his chest, rubbing warmth and love down its sides. 

"Poor thing," he said. The cat purred and purred. The feeling aligned with the magic buzzing from the ring, and Lance caught himself smiling the same moment Keith glanced up and saw it. “Wish there was something more we could do for it. It looks like a stray.”

As one who had a lot of experience sorting between well-loved and abandoned, Keith answered, “It is.” Before Lance could rebuke him, Keith hastily added, “I think I saw a heat lamp set up on someone’s porch a few houses back. We can drop it off there. It could get warm, at least.”

Lance scratched his fingers over the cat’s head. “It’s better than this.”

So they backtracked to the house Keith mentioned, found it in the small cluster of a neighborhood full of bent mailboxes and a hoarder’s mall of kids toys scattered around front lawns. Battered cars filled half-paved driveways. Crooked snowmen were a single, increased degree from collapse; the old scarves knotted around their misshapen heads snapped in the wind.

Quietly, the cat exchanged hands.

Keith was silent on his feet, more prone to slipping in and out of a stranger’s yard unnoticed. There were also several other cats huddled beneath the red-glow of the lamp, three or four liquid bodies huddled in the same, moth-eaten pet bed. Lance knew that if he attempted the light grace of adding another homeless cat to their number, they’d all scatter and run off. Or worse. Claws and needle-teeth would find his caring hands and shred.

From the road, Lance watched Keith climb up the rickety porch without a sound, saw several pairs of colored eyes wink to life under the light, then Keith bend down and run a loving hand over the rest. He sat the cat down where there was room, gave its ears one last scratch, and left. 

The cats watched him go. They shifted as a single thing, inventing more space for the newly added body, then settled.

One by one, the eyes winked back out.

And Keith returned to Lance, his hands out, seeking the reward of a touch, which Lance willingly gave.

“Thank you.”

Keith shrugged. He slipped his fingers between Lance’s and pulled him down the street. “It’s nothing.”

“You didn’t have to,” Lance kept on. They walked so close their shoulders knocked into the other as they moved. Any closer, and Lance’s long legs would’ve tripped Keith, or the other way around. And while they both knew it, neither of them shifted away.

“I know. But you’re right. It didn’t deserve to be cold all night.”

Feeling Keith’s chilly fingers locked in his own, Lance thought the same thing about him, not that he would ruin the moment and say it out loud.

Lance was well aware this whole little adventure was a delay, a detour from cutting straight across town to Keith and Shiro’s apartment. Lance knew it’d be like this the moment he tugged on his shoes and saw Keith hugging the wall, his arms crossed and his hands cupped around his elbows, fingers bearing down: Keith didn’t want to go home.

Lance suspected he only agreed to it because he suggested it in the first place.

But for all of Lance’s attempts to revoke his own offer, to express that it would be fine to stay there, Keith just shook his head and, eventually, he stormed out of Lance’s room and waited with the coats by the front door for him to come down.

Now, this. Rescuing stray cats. What came next? Herding escaped dogs from their pins? Calming shivering birds in their high-up nests? Asking bats down from the frosty, winter sky for a chat?

Lance eyed the side of Keith’s face. 

Underfoot, snow and ice crunched in that deep, satisfying way Lance felt all the way up to his knees. If he glanced back, he’d see their footsteps stamped in a perfect trail following them up the road, small stars from his Converse and rifts from Keith’s boots side-by-side.

He hadn’t abandoned his earlier wants, the childish urge to play in the snow. There was more than enough for snowball fights and forts. Plenty for them to build their own haphazard snowmen. The moon hung round and heavy above their heads, full or nearly so, and it washed everything in an ethereal, white glow the snow bounced back. Night as bright as day.

Lance dropped Keith’s hand.

He felt the look Keith sent him and ignored it, darting further down the street to an unmarked patch of land, and bent down. The chill stung his hands, burnt his fingers pink, but by the time Keith stopped behind him, his name rolling off his tongue, Lance was ready. 

He spun around and threw.

The pitch sent the snowball directly to Keith’s chest. It struck and fell into chunks around his boots.

Keith blinked. Then frowned. Then blinked again.

“What are you doing?” he asked softly, as if it wasn’t apparent.

As if this poor guy had never participated in a snowball fight before.

Lance’s heart sang. “What do you mean,” he asked back. “What’s it look like?”

He was already making another, hurriedly mashing the snow between his hands. 

It brought back a flood of memories. His sisters hollering, running quickly through the fields as Luis and Marco chased after them, flinging snowballs as large as their fists at their backs. Pidge and Hunk spending hours perfecting a snowy village in Pidge’s backyard, complete with a bridge Lance made out of dead rose stems and shreds of Pidge’s old hair ribbons. It snowed slow and steady the day after Sylvio’s fourth birthday, and Lance remembered carrying him outside after the sun sank low, so he wouldn’t miss the moment the entire farm lit up with vermillion sunset. 

Now, to dull the blow of what might happen once they reached Keith’s apartment, Lance gifted him this: An impromptu snowball fight on the same streets they ran through months before, close to the spot Keith kissed him first.

Lance grinned at him. And threw again.

This time, Keith caught it. The movement blurred in Lance’s vision, his mind slow to piece together how Keith’s hand leapt up from his side that quickly. And though it should’ve shattered from impact, the snowball remained perfectly intact.

“It looks like you’re starting something.” Keith tilted his head, and there it was, the smile Lance was waiting for.

He missed when Keith hurled the snowball back. It clocked him in the forehead, erupting in a confetti-bomb of snow.

Lance scrubbed his face. “Hey!”

“No. You earned that one.” Keith laughed around the word  _ earned _ , and Lance felt it warm him down to the marrow. “You started it.”

“Face-shots are off limits! I didn’t clock  _ you _ in the face!”

“That’s because you’re a terrible shot.”

Lance frowned and stuck out his tongue. “Am not!”

Keith grinned at him, one side of his mouth hitched up. Lance wanted to die on the spot. “Then prove it.”

They both took off, springing apart like same poles on magnets. Keith rushed into the snowy field and scooped up wads of snow. Lance tried his best, but his hands weren’t supernaturally blessed, and he only made a few before he had to call it and shake the ache out of his palms.

Snowballs zipped over his head.

Lance barely had time to duck.

He grabbed one of the three he’d made and snapped it in Keith’s direction.

A thing of note: Unless you’re incredibly sneaky, skilled, or some other punchy  _ s _ word, having a vampire boyfriend pretty much means you’ll never land another shot.

Lance underestimated Keith and overestimated himself.

Keith threw two more in his direction. One hit Lance’s shoulder, the other skidded on the icy road, where it dissolved back into dust.

Lance picked up the other two he had left, one in each hand, and bolted down the road. The sounds of Keith’s heavy boots crunching after him spurred Lance to pump his legs faster. A delighted laugh rushed up from his chest, stealing what little air he had left in his lungs in a surprised burst of noise.

He slowed.

Keith did not.

He grabbed Lance from behind and tugged him back. His hands were ice, the type of cold that seeped through Lance’s shirt front, but Lance barely cared. He laughed hard and loud, tears stinging at his eyes.

The mirth spilled into Keith. Not by design but because, no matter what, laughter is an infectious thing.

“Why are you laughing,” Keith said around a mouthful of soft amusement.

“ _ Because _ ,” Lance heaved. 

And then he turned, spinning in Keith’s arms, and clapped the remaining two snowballs against Keith’s cheeks.

“Gotcha,” he said, and grinned. 

Keith jerked back. Snow slid off his face, flakes assaulted his lashes, but the remainder fell with a wet  _ thwump _ to the ground. Indignation flared hot in Keith’s eyes.

“You--” It came out in a sputter. Lance’s throat tickled with laughter again. “You said no face shots!”

“Proved you wrong, though, didn’t I?” Lance squirmed out of Keith’s arms and lightly bounced back a few steps, glowingly smug from his own trickery. “Betcha didn’t even see it coming.”

Keith shook his head. He rubbed the snow off his face, revealing the pink places left on his cheeks, the very softest outlines of Lance’s excited fingers. “Cheater.”

“No.  _ Clever _ . Two different words, both start with  _ c _ , so I know it can get a little confusing on which is--”

In a clean, smooth step, Keith was right in front of him again.

“--which,” Lance finished lamely, blinking up at Keith’s close proximity.

The moment pulled tight between them.

Keith eyes were bright. Not the shattered-brillance of turning, but because moonlight just loves that certain color. Otherwise, his face remained impassive, his indignation replaced by something else entirely.

Lance’s amusement rolled into something far more pleasant all the way down to his feet.

Keith didn’t disappoint. He snuck a hand around the back of Lance’s head and pulled him in with barely any pressure. Lance was already swooning in, his lips parting expectantly, eyes drifting closed, his breath stilling.

Keith did not kiss him.

What happened was Keith’s warm breath poured into Lance’s ear, burning a searing path down past Lance’s belly.

“New game,” Keith murmured. “ _ Catch _ .”

Catch?

Lance turned his head. His hands flew out, his fingers skimming across the front of Keith’s shirt, snagging on the vinyl print--

\--and then nothing. Just cool, winter air.

Keith stood several feet away, that damn smirk on his mouth, his hands casually tucked in his pockets.

Catch.

As in--

“I know it’s a little confusing,” Keith said, taking a step back, another, never breaking eye contact. “Since it starts with  _ c _ , but--”

Belatedly, Lance took off after him.

With a near-silent laugh, Keith turned and bolted down the street, his steps impossibly spaced apart. His footprints appeared in the snow, smudged from movement, skipping feet at times, falling into a normal pattern in others. Lance had to focus on them or he’d lose where Keith was, and then the game would be forfeit and Lance would be lost.

They tore through Indigo Pull, dashed past slumbering houses and watchful streetlights, the moon ever spectating overhead. This was a moment remixed, a summer night reinvented for winter, the humidity replaced with chill and the buzzing gnats with lazy puffs of snow they kicked up as they ran. They jumped from shadow to shadow, skidded on wayward patches of ice, and kept going, Keith so far in the lead Lance knew it was pointless to keep trying as hard as he did.

Like the first time, Lance did not win this race.

He lost steam around the park, where the ice-crusted chain link fence groaned as he leaned against it, icicles breaking off under his hands. A stitch pinched his side, hot agony lodged under one of his ribs. His lungs burned whether he breathed in or out. His heart thudded violently enough it sickened him.

Lance didn’t realize they were heading in the opposite direction of the apartment complex until right then. They were as far from it as they were the farm, smack dab in the middle of Indigo Pull’s nowhere. The high school lay a block away, a curtain of poplar trees dense with snow blocking the brick facade from view. Other than that? There were a few modest neighborhoods and the courthouse, blown up with Christmas decorations and an almost cartoonishly sized tree topped with a giant, glowing angel.

Why did Keith lead him this way?

Winter nights are quiet affairs, free of all the ruckus summer encourages. There weren’t any late-night drag races peeling down the vacant highway, no chatty cicadas screaming in the forest or noisy birds up past their bedtime. There wasn’t any distant thunder rumbling beyond the mountains, no bass-drum beats from songs trapped in faraway houses. There was just Lance’s labored breathing, and Keith’s soft steps coming back to him.

“Cheater,” Lance puffed, breath steaming around his face.

Keith lifted his hands in a smooth shrug. “Actually, the word is--”

Lance jerked him forward and kissed the stupid word off his mouth before he got more  _ cocky _ than  _ clever _ . Keith fumbled, back to blinking, and Lance couldn’t resist, “Ha. What? Did I  _ catch _ you off guard?”

Color flooded Keith’s throat. “You--” He held Lance back at arms length, squinting at him, his face set in a glorious frown. “Are you  _ serious _ ?”

“Of course not.” Lance flapped his hand. “That doesn’t start with a  _ c _ .”

And just like that, Keith lost it.

He suddenly bent double, hands braced on his knees, and he was  _ laughing _ . Howling, rocking laughter that tore through the still silence of the town. It had such force behind it, it lobbed sturdy punches against Lance’s chest. It  _ staggered _ him, and God bless chain link fences or Lance would’ve gone down with him.

Their laughter rang like bells, ticking off the late hour, midnight done in ruthless delight.

They laughed until their bellies hurt, until tears sprang wells in their eyes and traced down their cheeks. And it felt  _ good _ . Better than magic, truer in a way. This was a thing shared, not given, not made, not forced.  _ Shared _ . Theirs alone.

Lance brushed his knuckles across his eyes. His breaths came in hiccups now, somewhere blurred between laughing still and outright sobbing. “ _ Stop _ ,” he whined. “I can’t breathe.”

Keith lay in the snow, curled in a squiggle of black clothes and pale, bouncing limbs. His hands covered his face, hiding his eyes from sight, so it took Lance longer than it should’ve--than it  _ would’ve _ under normal circumstances--to realize Keith didn’t tiptoe the same fragile line Lance did.

No, he was actually crying, and doing his best to muffle the soft sounds behind his palms.

Lance pushed away from the fence, and on jellied legs, he dropped next to him, gently coaxing Keith’s arms away. “Hey-- _ hey _ ,” he said, over and again, softer and more worried each time. “Keith,  _ Keith _ , what’s wrong?”

The low, “Nothing,”  _ did _ nothing to calm either of them. Not to mention the riot of tears diving off Keith’s lashes went against it. Lance’s heart squeezed tight. His fingers fumbled around Keith’s, held him too tightly as he moved over him.

“You’re crying.” Like it needed pointed out, but what else could Lance say?

Keith shook his head. His hair looked like spilt ink over the snow. “I--” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing softly, and he shut his eyes, clenched them tight. A helpless noise sounded in the back of his throat.

Lance dropped Keith’s hands and settled over him, not quite committed to sitting on his stomach, all his weight balanced on his knees.

“Keith,” he said again, this time as he slid his hands to Keith’s face, holding him like a breath in nervous lungs. “Talk to me.”

_ Talk to me. _

_ Look at me. _

_ Keith _ , Lance wanted to say. _ I’m still right here. _

Keith opened his eyes.

_ Now _ they were shattered like crushed gems, dazzling and sparked with reds and blues and layers of violet. The whites were yellowed, the glow from them dusting his cheeks. This was new. Or maybe the feeling behind it was.

Lance offered up a smile, small and tentative. “See? Still here.”

Keith swallowed again. He nodded and very aggressively rubbed an arm across his eyes. Lance winced for him, knowing he barely felt the pain it surely caused.

“I know. I  _ know _ , I’m sorry, this is so--I’m being so--”

Lance cut in, “If you say  _ stupid _ , I’ll pinch you.”

Keith grit his teeth. “But it’s true. I  _ know _ you’re right here. I  _ know _ you’re fine. But I keep. . .thinking. . .and then I realize,  _ again _ , that you almost didn’t. . .that you could’ve. . .”

Once again, Lance peeled away Keith’s arm. “New game,” he said. “No more thinking about  _ what ifs _ and  _ almosts _ , okay? Think of right now. Don’t worry about what already happened. Don’t worry about what might. I want you to just be here, in the now. With me.” Lance leaned down and touched their foreheads together. This close, the gentle light of Keith’s eyes hurt to look into, but Lance did it anyway. “Okay?”

Silence. Not the winter-deep silence of a sleeping town. This time it was punctured with heavy breaths from a stuffy nose and the murmur of arms moving around Lance’s back.

“Okay,” Keith finally agreed, rather wetly, like he spoke in ripples instead of syllables. “I’ll try.”

“And  _ I’ll _ try to remind you that I’m not going anywhere.” 

To prove his point, Lance lavished Keith’s entire face with a barrage of quick kisses. They fell everywhere--hair, brows, nose, his pretty eyes, down his cheeks, each ear, and finally against a set of lips that caught his midway towards another goal.

His lip snagged on the sharp point of a tooth from the sudden shift, and the soft taste of copper slid up his tongue.  _ Uh-oh _ . Lance went to pull back, tongue prodding over the cut--

\--but Keith followed him up, kissing him again, kissing him  _ harder _ and suddenly, his hands weren’t on his back but in Lance’s hair, and they were rolling in the snow, flipping places, Keith’s weight sinking against his stomach.

All the air in Lance’s lungs rushed out at once.

His hands jumped up, hung in midair, unsure of where they wanted to go first, so they went nowhere at all and simply clawed through the night air. Focus failed him. It was all he could do to keep up with the pressure of Keith’s shifting mouth, the soft slices of pain from lips that were cut and healed almost simultaneously.

It hurt. It didn’t hurt. It felt good, better than good,  _ great _ . Lance shivered under him, snow burning against his back, Keith burning against his front. His hands finally dropped, fingers twinning in Keith’s hair, and yanked him back.

“ _ Keith _ \--” It hit differently than he thought it would, graveled and low, pleasant in his own ears and, by the look on Keith’s face, even better in his.

When they kissed again, Lance didn’t break away. He met it, leaned up on his elbows, biting Keith’s lip before Keith’s fangs had the chance. A knot of pressure hit his chest, knocked him back into the snow, Keith trailing him all the way down.

If it had been spring or summer or even the first step into fall, there’d be no telling how long they’d have stayed like that, lost in the other, healing and breaking apart under the other’s attention. But since it was winter, and the ground crusted with ice and snow, Lance could only take so much before he had to push Keith off of him.

“ _ Stop _ ! Stop, we have to stop--”

Keith scrambled back, dragging gauges in the snow. “What?  _ What _ ?”

Lance rolled over and jumped to his feet. He shrugged out of his jacket and snapped the snow off of it. The shirt he wore underneath clung to his back, soaked. He shuddered and, with a pained groan, rubbed a hand up the aching plain of his spine. The touch stung. The breath of wind tore it to ribbons.

“Aw, crap.” Lance stamped his legs. They were little better, his jeans drenched through. “Well, we should’ve thought that through a little more, huh?”

Keith’s face went to agony. “Lance, I--”

Lance shook his jacket at him. “No. No, no, no. Apologies are off the table. This is my fault, too, you know.”

Keith’s leveled look said he didn’t buy that for a second. “But--”

“But nothing.” Lance pulled on his jacket again. Even wet, it at least blocked out the wind. A shiver rolled through him, hard enough his chattering teeth peppered what he said next. “It’s fine. I promise it’s fine. More than fine actually.” Carefully, Lance traced the inside of his mouth with his tongue, feeling for cuts and tasting for blood. He found neither. “Yeah. Way fine.”

Keith said nothing, mostly because Lance would just brush it aside anyway, and they both were aware they’d talk in circles all night if they kept going. So Keith let it go, and Lance stopped fussing, and they fell in beside one another, Lance trembling and Keith unsure of how to make it better without making it worse.

They looked past the locked fence at the iced equipment inside. Giant, twisting slides more white than orange. Glazed monkey bars and swing sets. Pebbled enclosures lost beneath snow. Faint impressions of footprints muddied the area at the gate, but hardly past that, where it looked like whoever visited here turned right back around and left.

“Why did you bring us out here,” Lance asked.

Keith went up to the gate and fed his fingers through the chainlink. “I don’t know.”

Lance thought he might. He stepped up beside him, leaning in close, his eyes on Keith’s faraway look. “You don’t have to go home if you’re not ready, Keith.”

The metal groaned under Keith’s clenching fists, ice shedding off like snakeskin, the weak chain link bending.

“I know that. . .”

“Do you? So you didn’t just agree to it because I suggested it?”

Keith pulled back his hands. Not a moment too soon. The fatigue in the metalwork looked a breath away from snapping apart.

“You’re right, though. I can’t keep running away from it forever.” Keith rubbed his hands over the back of his neck, his face pinched with worry. “Even if I want to.”

“One more day won’t hurt anything,” Lance pointed out. “We can go tomorrow.”

Keith shook his head. “Tomorrow just becomes tomorrow again. That’s how it works, no matter how good our intentions are.”

Lance hated to admit that he made a good point. “I guess so. But, really, we can--”

“No. I’ve already wasted enough time.” He huffed out a breath and his eyes slid to Lance’s. They were calm once again, no longer casting light. “We should get going before it gets any later. I’m sorry I led us out here.”

“What did I say about apologizes?” Lance knocked their shoulders together. Keith was the one that grabbed his hand.

“I know. . .” He sighed again, but it sounded different, more resolute. “You don’t have to come with me. I can do it by myself.”

“Please. I’ve come this far with you. Why would I stop now?”

The moon dipped behind a patchwork quilt of clouds, the light dimming from silver to gray. And despite the fact Lance’s eyesight wasn’t as sharp as Keith’s, he still saw the way his face went gentle and sad when it finally, finally, hit him that he wasn’t alone as he thought.

Lance squeezed his fingers.

Keith squeezed back.

“Ready,” Lance asked.

Though he didn’t exactly sound convinced, Keith confessed, “As I’ll ever be.”

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


Keith expected a lot of things to happen. 

He expected the apartment to reject him, his key not to fit, to have to do this entire experience alone. He expected Shiro gone, his mother once again vanished, an empty home that felt all the more vacant from all its missing parts.

For everything he thought, the opposite happened.

Lance was the one who took the key from him when he couldn't make himself lift it to the doorknob. The key fit. The lock turned. The door yawned open with a simple touch.

And inside, Keith heard weight shift on vinyl, a heart quicken, two sets of feet coming toward the door. He felt a hand clutch protectively around his, fingers around fingers, wristbones knocking. 

They stood and waited, Lance a half-step ahead, peering past the open door at the figures drawing close. Shiro’s came first, face broken apart in relief. And then Krolia, on his heels, somehow looking just as worried, which didn’t make sense.

Keith slid his hand from Lance’s, stepping backwards, his heart slamming against his ribs.  _ This was a mistake _ . They shouldn’t have left Lance’s room. They should’ve turned around once they hit the downtown shops still lined with their dim Christmas lights, when Keith slowed to a stop and couldn’t make himself move another step forward. Lance even suggested it,  _ again _ , as the sharp, winter wind lashed around them. 

_ We can go back _ , he reminded him, as he did at the park. He brushed Keith’s hair back behind his ears and leaned up on his toes. Their foreheads knocked together. All Keith could smell was the sunny scent of citrus and the snow freckling Lance’s cheeks.  _ We can turn around _ .

The Keith of ten minutes ago said  _ no _ . The Keith of ten minutes ago, while folded up in Lance’s arms, felt a lot more braver than he did right now.

Shiro stepped out into the hall.

“Keith,” he said, so softly it fell like a punch to the side of Keith’s head.

Lance glanced back at him, his brow knit, but he shuffled back and let Shiro by when Keith didn’t shake his head. And just like that, Keith was gathered up again, this time in a strong grip against a strong chest with the strong want to cry clenching his throat tight.

“I tried to call you,” Shiro was saying, as he held Keith against him. Keith felt how every part of him was shaking. “I thought you ran off. I thought you--”

It was Lance who said, “He’s been with me.”

Keith pushed back. Slowly, Shiro let his arm fall. The look Shiro leveled on him was heavy with regret.

“I. . .my phone got smashed,” Keith explained weakly. The rest wasn’t anyone’s business who didn’t already know. 

Lance tilted his head in Keith’s direction, but his attention was focused on Krolia, who filled the doorway, one hand braced on the doorframe, the other twined in a chain around her throat. It was an odd thing to notice, the glittering links, the weight of a hidden pendant folded in her fingers. Was it there the other day? How had he missed it? Didn’t Keith  _ look _ at her at all back then? No, he had, he remembered--

Fingers found his and squeezed, and then there was Lance, his warmth and his smell and the pressure of his hand folding around his. 

“Hey,” he said softly, and then Keith understood.

He looked down, away, and grit his sharpened teeth. He heard Shiro take a step forward again, to comfort, reassure, any of those things that might set Keith at ease, make him stay and not run off, but he never had the chance. Lance filled up the space nearest to him and blocked out the sight of anyone else.

“Keith, if you need--”

He needed a lot of things. He wanted even more.

Looking up, he saw the worry lining Lance's face from eyes to mouth and knew that if he even breathed about wanting to go, Lance would drag him all the way back to the farm and up into his room within a second. He was stupid to force himself down here anyway, when the pain was still fresh, and he wasn’t sure he actually cared what his mom or his brother had to say.

But he needed to know.

One way or another, he’d need to hear this conversation, if for nothing else than to close his heart off entirely.

Keith let himself squeeze Lance’s hand once more, just for himself, then let go and stepped around him.

Krolia stared at him, but when he came up, she stood aside and let him into the apartment.

The apartment hadn’t changed much, and why would it have? Keith was the changed one, not this place. The only difference he could see within a quick glance was a threadbare blanket had been left on the couch, a crumpled pillow fallen to the floor. So his mom hadn’t left after all. Despite all the anger Shiro seemed to have towards her, he let her stay.

Or, maybe, he made her.

The door clicked shut softly behind them, and now when Keith glanced back, the room was cluttered with several bodies. Shiro, pacing into the kitchen, jaw clenched and eyes deeply troubled. Krolia, pressed back against the door, arms crossed, whatever she wore still hidden in the palm of her hand.

And Lance, back at his side, close enough their shoulders touched, and his hand was within reach if he wanted it. Or needed it. Or both.

It was always both.

“So, go on. What did you want to tell me?” Keith glanced between Shiro and Krolia, clenching his hand into a fist so he wouldn’t reach for Lance’s hand. Not yet. 

Krolia’s eyes flashed over to Lance, lingered there, then darted to Keith. “And him?”

“Anything you tell me I’ll tell him anyway.” As if that wasn’t enough to go by, if their hallway-touches and the soft way Lance spoke to him wasn’t enough to clue her in, Keith slipped his fingers between Lance’s and held.

Lance squeezed back and nodded once, sharply, his eyes boring into Krolia.

She didn’t seem surprised. In fact, Krolia said, “Of course. I gather you already know, then?”

Lance nodded again. Squeezed Keith’s fingers tighter. “Yeah, I do.”

Her eyes went steely. Her head tilted some. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’re a McClain, afterall.”

That made them both falter, exchange quick, curious glances. Keith turned to Shiro, who shook his head.

“It’s her job to know, Keith,” was what Shiro said, which wasn’t anywhere close to what Keith expected to hear.

“Her. . .job?”

Lance took a step forward. Their hands hung between them, still knotted together. “What’s any of that supposed to mean? Stop being cryptic. We’re standing  _ right here _ , just say it plain.”

Krolia pushed away from the door. She dropped her hand, and Keith finally saw what the pendant was--a sort of star-shape, trapped in a sharply-pointed triangle. “I’m saying I know what your family is,” she said. “You’re part of one of the largest surviving lineages left of white witches.”

Keith started. This was the second time someone had said something similar. How did they know? For all his own supernatural advantages, whenever Keith looked at Lance--at any of his family--they seemed no different than anyone else.

Lance tensed. His fingers slipped free from Keith’s. “What?”

“Your family is the reason I came down here to start with. I had to monitor you, keep tabs on your powers, make sure none of you slipped up, went dark or rouge, as it sometimes happens.” She folded her arms across her chest. When she spoke again, she sounded like she was reading from a book, not recounting her own experiences. “I was only supposed to stay for a year at most. But then. . . Things changed, and I found myself unable to go." Her eyes went to Keith. ". . .I found myself not  _ wanting _ to go."

Keith swallowed. "Because of me."

Krolia's stare softened. The hard line of her mouth, too, but that was harder to notice. "Yes. And Texas, too."

"Then why leave at all?" Keith didn't say what filled his mouth next, just let the words lay bitter on his tongue:  _ Why didn't you find a way to stay? _

"Because there's. . .complications with what I do." She seemed to consider something, then went on. "I know it may sound a little strange, but I'm part of a group called the Blades, who keep an eye on what we call the Underground."

Lance cut in, "'The Underground'?" Keith felt his look, the heavy, searching press of his blue eyes willing Keith to look at him. ". . .and you're saying my family. . .is part of that?"

"Anything that's considered supernatural is. Witches, like yourself, heirloom or bargained. It doesn't matter how." She touched the pendant again, then let her fingers fall. "Lycans. Walkers. Most of the Underground keeps to itself. They follow the rules, don't draw attention, don't do anything to cause intervention. But sometimes, there's a slip-up, deliberately or accidentally, and we have to come in and deal with it. And when we do. . .you have to understand, these creatures are known for holding grudges."

Keith's skin pricked. "Grudges?"

Krolia nodded. "Of the worst kind."

A clatter sounded from the kitchen.

Shiro stood, braced against the counter, his arm shaking. An upturned coffee mug rolled dangerously close to the edge, a wrong breath away from slipping off and striking the floor. At the last second, Shiro righted it and pushed it back. The handle knocked against the wall.

Keith finally turned to Lance, his expression as worried as the feeling squeezing his own stomach.

"You said. . .you told me--" Keith's chest went tight. And then Lance was there, knowing without knowing how much he was starting to break inside. Like if he were the mug and had hit the floor, Keith was starting to fracture from impact. "What did you mean?"

Again, Krolia clutched her pendant. She squeezed it, the points digging into her skin. "I was telling the truth." Her voice was lower than it had been, no longer carefully measured, and full of something Keith didn't dare give name to. "It was never supposed to be this way. I left so it wouldn't be."

"You left too late," Shiro said, and to see his face like that, brows lowered, eyes shining, knocked Keith back to five months prior, as they stood in the Holt's massive house, in a bedroom that was as much Shiro's as the hunting shed was Keith's.

Krolia didn't argue. She said, "I left too late."

Keith opened and closed his mouth. He was a fish above water. He was a body without lungs. He was going to suffocate around every implication weighing the air.

"So what?" Lance asked, Keith's voice now that Keith couldn't ask himself. What Krolia had said about his family obviously troubled him--he was rocking his weight between his feet and rubbing his palms dry on his pant legs. "Why does that matter?"

"It matters," Shiro seethed. Anger didn't sound right coming out of his mouth, but this? This was a part of Shiro Keith had never seen before. "Because it gets people killed."

Silence dropped over them all.

Keith saw time slow, heard breath catch in throats, smelled the sour way understanding settled into the room.

Keith looked at Shiro. Shiro stared at Krolia like he could set her alight if he tried hard enough.

Indigo Pull thrashed with more snowfall. A relentless wind heaved against the sliding glass door, old bolts groaning, gaps in the insulation keening high and frantic. The trees nearest to the apartment complex screamed with out-of-place bird song, hours too early, a season behind.  _ We know _ , they seemed to say,  _ we know we know we've known _ .

Keith's legs pulled him across the room, to the opposite side of the counter, his hands shaking as he pressed them over the dent he left just days before. "What," he asked, "are you saying?"

Keith was hyper-aware of every shift, every noise, every beat of every heart. It was Shiro's he focused on, the unsteady throb of it rapid staccato ringing in his ears.

Shiro didn't answer him. By the look of his clenched jaw and shaking hand, he wasn't able to.

From behind him, Keith heard Krolia ask, ". . .what do you remember about that night?"

That night.

_ That _ night.

There was no confusion associated with the phrase, no need to ask what she meant by it. There was only one night she could possibly mean.

The truth tumbled out of him.

"I remember leaving Shiro's apartment and stealing his car. I needed out, to get away from--everything. I was suffocating in there." He gave Shiro an apologetic look. Shiro shook his head once, firmly, and stared at the grout running white grid lines through the decorative tile. ". . .I remember an alley, sort've, neon signs and a dumpster. Then I woke up in the apartment again, Shiro and Adam arguing about me."

"No," Shiro said softly. "Not about you."

Keith held his breath.

"About what happened to you."

Even though he knew it, had days for the knowledge to settle and not flare with pain when he thought of it, hearing it come from Shiro's mouth, in his own, quiet voice, sharpened the truth of it blade-sharp. It cut into him, stabbed him in the stomach. 

Keith was going to be sick.

"Adam found you, half-dead, behind a club downtown. There--" A year to prepare for this didn't stop Shiro's voice from breaking. "--there was so much blood, Keith. When I saw you, I thought you were dead."

Keith's hands slipped away from the counter. Dimly, he sensed Lance step close. He heard the turmoil lodged deep within his heart.

"We both checked you over--and over and over--and we couldn't find where it came from. You were fine." Quieter, "We thought you were fine.

"But when we got back home, when we tried to bring you inside, you howled. In  _ pain _ . And we saw--your eyes and your fangs, and that's when I knew." Shiro's burning stare found Krolia again, who acknowledged it without flinching. "I just didn't know why. Krolia promised. . .she said she got out in time, that her tracks would be covered. That nothing would try to come after her. But you were wrong. You stayed too long and things took notice, and they came after what they could."

Keith's world pitched sideways. The ceiling spun. The floor jerked out from under his feet like a magician's tablecloth. Lance caught him, held him, kept the room from whirling off into some ruined reach of outer space.

The warmth of his hands. The cutting scent of his citrus shampoo. Even the way he breathed gave Keith something to focus on that wasn't  _ this _ . 

"So I'm--what happened to me, it was because. . .I was. . ."

"Yes," came Krolia's voice. "After I met Texas, after I knew about you, I quit the Blades and stayed here. I didn't want to leave, Keith. . ." Keith's shoulders flinched back at the sound of his name; Lance's fingers darted down his arm and clenched around his hand. "But you can't just quit what I do. No matter how careful I was--and I was extremely careful--it catches up." 

She let out a long breath. "I thought you'd be safer without me than with me. And you were, for a while."

Keith was coming undone, minute by crawling minute.

"But I took out a nest of vampires close to Verdant Run. Those who survived, they wanted revenge. And. . ."

She looked at him, the weight of the entire world heavy in her gaze.

Keith understood now.

It wasn't simply that he'd been at the wrong place at the wrong time. No matter where he would've been--Verdant Run, Indigo Pull, lost in the goddamn woods--they would have found him eventually and turned him. All to pay for the crimes Krolia committed against them.

An eye for an eye.

Life for life.

Keith was meant to make her suffer. But the shitty thing about that was, Krolia had been gone longer than she'd stayed. So did it really hurt her, in the end, whether Keith was human or  _ this _ ?

Keith didn't think so.

It was his own pain to bear. And Lance's now, too.

And Shiro's, who was always there for him, despite their different mothers and homes. He always loved Keith as his brother, half or full or not at all. 

Something still didn't add up.

Where did Adam fall into all of this?

Keith stepped back, right against Lance's chest. He'd forgotten he stood so close and now that he was aware of him, of every single place they touched, Keith tore away and sent Lance stumbling back.

The hurt that flashed across his face was brief, but there all the same.

"What--" Keith bit, losing heart and voice and nerve all at once. He couldn't say it, only stare at the misery lining Shiro's face and hope he'd understand.

He did.

Of course he did.

They were brothers, after all.

Shiro tapped his hand down against the counter, where his ring caught the light and their attention. When he spoke, Shiro spoke to it, like it was a living thing and not a halo of metal he never discarded.

"After what happened to you, Adam got it in his head to try and find out who did it. He obsessed over it. He kept telling me that it was to set things right. . .but he didn't know what he was getting into. Neither of us did."

"Wait.  _ Wait _ ," Lance spoke up, sounding panicked, his voice pitched too high. His hands waved around, as if he were trying to stitch the story together with his fingers. "But Adam was found on the side of the road. He--they found a wrench. And his. . .we all heard about it."

Krolia shook her head. "If you were trying to remain hidden, would you throw that all away for a single victim? These are creatures who've lived for hundreds of years. They are no more stupid than they are kind."

Lance wilted. His hands dropped to his sides, his nervous energy bleeding out of him. "So all of that. . ."

"Was intricately planned out and executed, yes, but no one in Indigo Pull is responsible." Krolia touched her necklace again, then caught herself and slowly pulled her hand away. "It's unfortunate--"

" _ Unfortunate _ ," Shiro snapped. "It's not  _ unfortunate. _ You brought this on us. On  _ all _ of us."

"I didn't intend to. I tried to prevent it from happening. I did everything I could--"

"And look! It wasn't enough. Nothing you did, nothing you tried to do to prevent this, worked in the end!"

If before Keith had suffocated, when he was trapped in the small rooms of Shiro's old apartment and drowning in his grief, he smothered now. All out of air. His heart a beat or two from giving out. Couldn't they see that?

Lance was the only one.

Lance, the only one looking at him.

And he was the one to see the second it all became too much, too heavy, too painful.

If he had reached out, maybe Keith might've been able to stay.

If he had his gifts, if he healed the pain as it came, Keith might have stood in the kitchen and said something, anything, to placate the arguments flying over his head.

But Lance didn't. He couldn't.

How had it been only hours since they ran in the snow, playing catch and kissing each other under the heavy branches of evergreens?

Several lifetimes cycled in the span of days. Why did he think he was ready for this? Why didn't he listen to Lance? Why didn't he let him take him by the hands and led him back home?

Keith shook the thoughts out of his head, useless as they were now.

And then he ran.

  
  


_ ♰♰♰ _

  
  


The door flung back so hard it knocked a hole in the drywall and tore half-off its hinges, and still it took Krolia and Shiro several seconds to understand what had happened.

Lance, who watched it all, was already bolting for the door, following after the ghostly smudge of Keith's black hair fading down the hallway, his name tearing past his mouth.

A pair of strong hands grabbed him and held him back, then jostled him aside as Shiro shot down the hall, pleading in his voice, Keith's name running after shadows. 

"Don't," said a voice above Lance's head. "Let them work this out between themselves."

Lance jerked away. He spun on Krolia, incredulity burning a fire through him. "Did you  _ see _ him? He was breaking apart. He's--he's--"

Gone.

_ Keith ran away when things got hard _ . 

Lance thought that just this morning, when it looked like Keith had done what he did right now--fled the inevitable, and the hurt that always seemed to come along with it. But this was different. This wasn't an argument to sooth. This wasn't a single bad night spent in tight discomfort. This was Keith's  _ life _ now, and every ugly consequence tied with it, all splayed out in the open like a bloody hand of cards.

Krolia frowned. She glanced down the long hallway, now vacant, full only in the sense of sound: buzzing lights and the echoes of slamming doors and heavy footsteps. 

"He's strong," she said as she walked back into the apartment, clearly expecting Lance to follow. And he wouldn't have, if she hadn't said, "But this isn't easy. For either of them.  _ Any _ of us. I think it's best we let them have a moment."

Chewing the inside of his cheek, Lance reluctantly agreed. 

Besides, what more could he possibly say to make things any better?

Inside, Krolia began throwing open cabinet doors and rifling beneath the sink, dragging out boxes of unsorted junk and sliding aside stacks of plates. Lance watched her do this for all of two minutes, quietly perplexed, before he finally gave in and asked her what she was looking for.

She nodded her head towards the broken door. "Something to fix that with."

"Oh. Good point." Lance lightly touched the door, grimacing when it groaned warningly on its one good hinge. "Tool kit's in the laundry room."

She went to fetch it while Lance kept the door propped up, suddenly worried that, without the extra support, it'd snap off entirely. 

". . .are all vampires strong like this," he asked when she returned, somehow juggling searching the bag and carrying it all at once. 

"Yes and no." Krolia stood behind the door, a soft knot of concentration pinched between her brows. After a moment, she pulled out a screwdriver, tested it to the remaining screws, and then pinched it in the fold of her elbow.

"What does that mean?"  _ Yes and no _ was an answer that didn’t provide any information. Filler words. Something to sate curiosity without giving anything away. "If you're trying to be all sneaky about this stuff, I think it's a little late for that, considering."

Amusement softened Krolia's glance, her eyes taking to the emotion like Keith's did. Lance didn’t know what to do with this information now that he had it. He looked away. 

"That wasn't what I meant by it." 

With Lance's help, they held the door back into place, and she made quick work screwing the hinges back in with whatever she scavenged from the bag. It wouldn't hold it for long, especially not if someone tried tearing it off again, but it would do until the landlord could come up and schedule a proper fix.

Krolia continued, "What you think about vampires is only half right. There's actually two kinds: the cursed and those that curse them." 

Lance glanced at her, and found her passing him the screwdriver and the extra screws. He took them, held them, and felt a soft pull of nostalgia for the Garrett’s garage. All that was missing was Hunk’s rebounding laughter and the smell of oil smeared on concrete.

He knelt and started unceremoniously jamming the tools away. “What’s the difference,” he asked, peeking up at Krolia. The question he asked really translated to,  _ Which one is Keith? _

She acknowledged him with a look that said,  _ I know what you’re really asking _ .

“The cursed are what we call Blights, or half-bites. They’re restricted to blood-drinking, can’t go out in the sunlight, touch silver. All of those common myths you know.”

“So, Keith’s a--”

“Half-bite, yes.” A frown hooked Krolia’s mouth down for a second, then passed, all within the span of one blink and the next. “The other type, the true  _ vampire _ , is a curse-maker. They are extremely skilled at passing as human, not only because they were once, but because all the things that plague a half-bite don’t them.”

Lance’s heart kicked up. “Wait. . .so they don’t drink blood or--”

He cut off when Krolia shook her head. “No, they don’t. They can, but why would they risk appearing anything other than human? Their only purpose is to inflict curses and blend in, and they’re incredibly skilled at both.”

Lance chewed on his lower lip. He took a steadying breath, held it in, letting it all out in a  _ whoosh _ of air as his next words tumbled out, “Keith, can he--does that mean he can’t. . .if he bites someone, he isn’t going to change them too?”

Krolia sent him an odd look. Odd, but also blunted at the edges with understanding. She knew why he asked this, why it was important for him to know. “No. Like I said, half-bites are cursed, but they can’t spread that curse to others.”

At the river, even if Keith had managed to bite him before his family arrived--if Lance’s family hadn’t shown up at all--it wouldn’t have mattered.  _ I’ve never seen you as anything but this _ . Veronica had told him that, and she  _ saw the future _ . But that also meant--

\--it meant that if Lance’s  _ mamá _ hadn’t shown up when she had, if the river didn’t do as the river did and helped amplify her magic, then Lance. . .

He would have died with Keith doing everything he thought he possibly could to save him.

Lance stopped thinking about it.

He shut his eyes and swallowed the lump rising in his throat, and he cast the thought so far out of his head it’d take him days to find and worry over again.

When he opened his eyes, Krolia stood near him, regarding him with concern. She tried to ask about it, and, frantically, Lance spoke over her.

“What--”

“You said you knew about my family,” he blurted out.

Taken aback, Krolia nodded once in agreement.

He didn’t think about it before, when she admitted his family was the only reason she came to Indigo Pull in the first place. He didn’t piece two-and-two together when she said them she was there to watch them and make sure they didn’t misuse their powers.

Thinking of the river made Lance remember. Feeling the emptiness inside him made him desperate for answers.

“. . .is there a way to get back gifts if they’re lost?”

That seemed to take Krolia back. She folded her arms across her chest and canted her head. It was another Keith-like gesture, close but a little off, enough that it made Lance’s stomach squirm in unease. “What do you mean, ‘lost’?”

“As in  _ gone _ . Vanished. No longer there.” He knew he sounded desperate, but if she had answers, if she could lead him in the right direction, then. . .

“Magic can’t be  _ lost _ ,” she said, and every, single thing in Lance fell apart. Maybe she saw this. Or maybe her curiosity made her ask, “What makes you think it’s gone?”

“Because I can’t. . .feel it anymore,” he said. His fought tears battled further up his throat.

“Feel what? What is it that you can do?” Lance hesitated. Krolia shook her head. “It’s alright. If you can tell me. If you’re worried about me running off to tell my organization all your secrets, that isn’t why I’m here.”

Both of them glanced at the door, now shut, though too-wide gaps showed peeks into the hallway. Lance folded his fingers around his  _ mamá’s _ ring. Focusing on the vibration of magic rolling up his arm helped ease his worry--over himself, yes, but for Keith’s absence too.

“Okay. . .I don’t know how much you need to know--”  
“More is better. Trust me, I’ve heard or seen it all already. No detail is too much.”

Lance nodded. “Well, I. . .can feel people’s emotions. I haven’t always. Or maybe I have, I don’t know, it kinda hit me full force at the end of summer and, like, I really knew it then.” He glanced up at Krolia. If he expected skepticism, he didn’t find it coming from her, only from within himself. “And then, something. . .bad happened. Really bad. And my mom--she’s a healer, but I guess. . .I guess you probably knew that, but she had to take me into the river to heal me and since then I can’t. . .I haven’t been able to sense anyone anymore. I’ve tried to make myself and it just. My nose bleeds. And I get headaches.”

Another moment passed between them when nothing was said.

The wind howled, low and mournful, against the side of the apartment. Scraping sounds foretold that, come morning, either the two plastic lawn chairs Shiro set up on the concrete balcony would be there, or would not.

Finally, when Lance was about to ask her to  _ please say something _ , Krolia spoke up.

“Can you describe it to me? Your empathy?”

Even her knowing the correct term turned Lance’s hope star-bright.

“Yeah--like, I can feel how people are feeling. Obviously. Sorry. And I started to be able to project it out, too? Strong stuff, like fear or happiness or things like that. And I tried to learn how to heal other people’s emotions, the bad stuff.” He thought for a moment. “. . .there’s other things. I’ve seen ghosts. And I can. . .rip out people’s emotions, too.” Saying it outloud, to someone who didn’t know him, made him realize  _ going rouge _ was an actual thing to worry about. Lance twisted his fingers. “The bad thing that happened, I had to. . .I was trying to. . .”

“It’s alright.” She touched her pendant again, like Lance had seen her do several times that night. “Now when you say you. . . _ ’rip out people’s emotions’ _ , what do you mean by that?”

Lance twirled the ring between his fingers, his brow twisting up. Just admitting it made him feel a hundred times more awful, even if Griffin deserved it. “It’s like I. . .hollow them out. Of everything they’re feeling. Pain, too, sometimes. The first thing I ever felt was Keith’s bruised knuckles.” He wiggled his fingers, the memory of that morning so distant but also impossibly only months ago. “I felt them as my own.”

Krolia’s hand fell. “Pain isn’t an emotion,” she pointed out.

Lance raised a shoulder. “Neither are ghosts,” he said softly.

“Neither are ghosts,” she agreed.

A heavy thought had settled over Lance since what happened to him at the river. He turned what Griffin said over and over in his head: The locker door had gone to rust. But how did emotions wear down something as strong as metal, in so short of time?

He didn’t want to say it, but he did, even though it took all the parts that made him fit together correctly and broke them apart.

“I’m not an Empath, am I?”

Krolia smoothed her thumb over the etching of her necklace, her eyes once again faraway. Seconds ticked by, and for each one, Lance started shaking a little more.

Then,

“Yes and no.”

The answer that wasn’t an answer.

Distantly, Lance heard a heavy door open and a heavy door fall close. Footsteps hitting tile. People waking up.

“What does that even  _ mean _ \--”

Krolia held up her hand. “It means, you’re both an Empath and not. You  _ are _ because you’re gifts were easier for you to process that way. But, at their most basic, what are emotions if not electrical impulses in a person’s brain. Pain, too, is an electric impulse.”

Lance stared at her dumbly. “And ghosts are, what?”

“The same as emotions or pain or anything else you’ve described. It’s all energy,” she said. “You aren’t an Empath. You’re a  _ Channel _ .”

The footsteps paused outside of the door, but Lance barely heard the hinges squeal in protest as someone pushed it open.

All he heard was the words,  _ You’re a Channel _ , replay over and over again until they didn’t make any more sense.

And then Shiro’s voice, cutting through it all, panic lacing every word that tumbled out of his mouth,

“I can’t find him. Keith, he’s gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright!!! You know what, this is probably a terrible place to say, 'this is all I have written up to this point', but here we are! I'll have to take a slight hiatus so I can finish this story, so I hope you guys don't mind the wait! When I first posted this story up, I had no idea I'd get as much feedback and support as I have! And every day it still floors me people like my little niche, deep southern fic, so I wanted to thank everyone who's taken time to read it or leave me comments or give me kudos. Y'all are amazing! Thank you for everything!! 
> 
> And I'll see you here soon! Hopefully with the rest of this fic! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the tender ache when you press against bruises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23075476) by [bobtheacorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtheacorn/pseuds/bobtheacorn)


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